Making soup can be like creating a masterpiece, but some ingredients might not belong in the pot. Here are ten things you might want to think twice about adding to your soup. From ingredients that can overpower the flavor to those that just don't mix well texture-wise, avoiding these can help ensure your soup is delicious and satisfying.
Table of Contents
- 1. Blue and Purple Vegetables
- 2. Bell Peppers
- 3. Broccoli
- 4. Beetroot
- 5. Iceberg Lettuce
- 6. Tuna
- 7. Red Cabbage
- 8. Brussels Sprouts
- 9. Frozen Vegetables
- 10. Beef Liver
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1. Blue and Purple Vegetables
Serving blue and purple vegetables at meals is a surprising and colorful addition that will capture everyone's attention. Who wouldn't be awed by richly purple carrots, deep blue potatoes, and bright purple cauliflower? Using them in a soup is a different story. Not only would these vegetables turn your soup into a wild purple hue, but purple and blue vegetables used in soups turn an unappetizing shade of gray. Plus, cauliflower will make it bitter, tasting and smelling like sulfur.
2. Bell Peppers
Bell peppers are another vegetable that, when served in different meals, has a stunning visual appeal. Green, orange, yellow, and red bell peppers are fantastic in omelets and many other dishes, but adding them to soup is a terrible idea. The skin from the peppers gives the soup a bitter taste. It may be tempting to add bell peppers to a soup for a pop of color, but the flavor would make it inedible.
3. Broccoli
Broccoli is a tasty vegetable, especially when steamed, blanched, sautéed, or roasted. But unless you're making cream of broccoli soup, which is fantastic, it would be wise to avoid adding it to other types of soups. Lengthy immersion in a liquid like soup gives fresh broccoli a mushy consistency; frozen broccoli is even worse.
4. Beetroot
Fans of borscht are probably looking at the inclusion of beetroot on this list and scratching their heads in confusion. Of course, beetroot is the prime ingredient in borscht, but it would not be a welcome addition to other soups. Not only will it turn the broth a bright shade of pinkish red, but it'll also make the soup taste like dirt. That's a hard pass.
5. Iceberg Lettuce
In Chinese and other Asian American cultures, the recipes for iceberg lettuce soup follow precise cooking methods that keep the lettuce crispy while enhancing its natural flavor. If you don't have the time or patience to learn how to make this soup properly, it's probably different from what you'll want to venture to make on your own.
6. Tuna
Some varieties of fish are easy to make fish soups with. Non-oily white fish like cod, flounder, haddock, pollock, and tilapia are the types that are ideal for making soup. Tuna would only taste terrible in a soup. If you have leftover tuna, skip the soup and make it into sushi rolls, salads, burgers, casseroles, or even serve it with pasta.
7. Red Cabbage
Like other vegetables with vivid colors, red cabbage is gorgeous to look at and is delicious when served in various ways. Believe it or not, there are recipes for red cabbage soup. They require a degree of food acid to balance out the flavors, which can make it work. However, any soup with red cabbage as the main ingredient will have that distinctive reddish-purple hue that may not be palatable to everyone.
8. Brussels Sprouts
Brussels sprouts are cruciferous vegetables in the same family as broccoli, collard greens, and kale, meaning they have that distinctive sulfur smell when cooked in liquids. There are several ways to prepare broccoli that make them a delicious dish, but soup isn't one of them. The overpowering smell of them, when simmered in broth, is enough to run everyone out of the house.
9. Frozen Vegetables
For most meals, frozen vegetables are an acceptable alternative to fresh and canned vegetables when unavailable. However, frozen vegetables aren't necessarily the best to use in soups. They are already full of water from the freezing process, and thawing them out makes them soft. Simmering them for hours in broth only makes them even softer to the point of turning to mush.
10. Beef Liver
Beef liver isn't for everyone, but it certainly doesn't belong in a soup. It already has a strong flavor that leans toward the bitter. Adding it as the main ingredient to a soup will overpower it and make the broth taste as bitter as the meat itself. If you want to use leftover liver and not throw it away, you can slice it up and serve it on a bed of pasta or make paté out of it. But keep it far away from your soup pot.
Source: Reddit.
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