Recipe Roundup: 6 Soups for the Season

and a few tricks to infuse your favorite healing herbs right in

Nov 17, 2024

Cozy, comforting, and relatively quick to make, soups are a staple in my kitchen this time of year. Especially with the abundance of hearty root vegetables and squash, there’s nothing quite as soothing to come home to after a long day than a piping hot bowl of (you guessed it) soup.

While soups tend to be on the simple side as far as meals go, there are a few things I like to do to zhuzh them up and make them feel extra special.

Herbal Broth

One trick to making soups (and endless other dishes, for that matter) full of flavor is perfecting the art of making stock or bone broth. I’ve been pretty religious about making a batch of bone broth each week, and it saves me so much time in the days ahead.

Typically, I’ll grab an organic rotisserie chicken, remove the meat, and use the carcass as the base. However, I’ve been roasting a whole chicken on the weekends, which has also been a lovely ritual to begin my bone broth process.

Now, of course, you can keep a bone broth relatively straightforward with usual suspects like onion, carrots, and celery, but this is also the perfect time to infuse not only aromatic herbs but medicinal herbs as well.

The low and slow nature of broth is perfect for adding dried roots or mushrooms that take a bit longer to extract their benefits. My favorites are dried shiitake, reishi, maitake, astragalus, and jujubes.

You can always add more tender plant parts, like leaves and flowers, and let those steep towards the end since they don’t need as much time to extract their benefits. I like to add nettle, calendula, oat tops, lemon balm, and lemon verbena.

If you would like to get all the details on my go-to herbal broth recipe, you can find it here. While I use this as the base for most of my soups, it’s also perfect for creamy risotto, polenta, congee, gravy, and pan sauces, so it’s nice to keep some leftovers in the freezer when you need it.

The Extras

Here’s where you can get creative and not feel like you’re stuck making the same soup over and over again. As you’ll notice with most of the recipe photos below, I’m big on toppings, and I love them all—toasted nuts and seeds, croutons, parmesan, crumbled feta, or a dollop of yogurt or creme fraiche are some solid options.

Spice Blends

I also like to make my own herbal spice blends, not only for flavor but to get the healing benefit of the herbs. For example, I’ll make a small jar of a curry blend, then add powdered adaptogens like ashwagada or astragalus, so each time I’m seasoning something with it, it already has my herbs infused right in.

Another trick I like to do with the spice blend is warming it up in a pan with a spoonful of ghee or olive oil and letting it get aromatic. It brings out the flavor of the spice blend while making a quick and delicious topping you can drizzle over soups and other dishes.

Citrus

If you taste your soup and think, “Something is missing,” it’s usually always a little acid. A good squeeze of lemon or even lemon zest can add brightness to most dishes, including soups. You likely won’t ever come into my kitchen and not see a bowl full of lemons—I feel rich when I have a lot of lemons around.

Fresh Herbs

I feel like this seems pretty obvious, but if you’re not in the habit of keeping fresh herbs around, they can be forgotten. Most things I make get topped with a healthy amount of freshly chopped herbs of some sort. May it be dill, cilantro, parsley, tulsi, basil, or thyme, you really can’t underestimate the power of these humble kitchen herbs.

I tend to keep my fresh herbs in little glasses on the counter so I remember to use them. When they’re tucked away in the fridge, it’s like they disappear from my consciousness. Plus—they look lovely displayed as bouquets in the kitchen, so it’s a win-win!

Where to Buy Herbs

One of my favorite organic and biodynamic herbal brands is Oregon’s Wild Harvest. They’ve been kind enough to offer the Kosmic Cooking Club 15% off their entire website if you follow the link here.

While you can’t combine the discount with other offers or sales, there’s no code necessary to get the 15% off, and the discount will be applied at checkout. So grab some bulk herbs or other herbal goodies you’ve been meaning to stock up on!