Tag Archives: Great Jones Cookware

anatomy of a soup

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It’s a rainy day. It has been damp and rainy and then gray and damp and now it’s raining again. It is the first day of fall, and a perfect day to make soup.

Potato leek soup came to mind. I had all of the ingredients!

When I heard it was going to be a rainy weekend, I went to the freezer to retrieve the end bits of whole chickens that I save along with gizzards and necks from whole chickens that I had roasted. I save all this to make bone broth with.

So this morning instead of getting out the Instant Pot, I did bone broth the old school way, in a big soup pot on the stove.

I took the gizzards, and necks, and two 1 quart containers of roasting pan juices and chicken carcasses and tossed it into my big Great Jones soup pot.

I mention the brand because I love Great Jones cookware. I discovered them a few years ago on the Today Show when they were just starting out, and I had some pots that I wanted to replace, so I tried a couple. Now, a few years have gone by and the majority of my cookware for every day stuff is from them. I will never, however, give up my love for vintage Dansk Kobenstyle Dutch ovens.

In the soup pot, along with the chicken carcasses and necks and gizzards, I added a few things. Salt, 2 cups of rosé wine, because that was what was open, a half dozen carrots, one onion, two bay leaves, and spices. I chose Shwarma seasoning and Za’atar. Don’t ask me how much I just threw a couple of dashes in. Then I added some more water so that the soup pot was about 2/3 full. The pot called “Big Deal” is 8 quarts.

I cooked everything together I guess about three hours. Then I allowed the broth to cool slightly, and I removed the carrots to their own bowl to be used in the next stage of the soup. I removed all of the bones and gizzards, leaving just the broth. I then skimmed the fat off of the top of the broth.

Then I rough chopped two red onions and tossed them in the pot with the skimmed broth. I had already sliced a bunch of fresh leeks and had them soaking in ice water to make sure all the sandy soil had lifted away. I drained the leeks and tossed them into the pot.

Next I took dozen small potatoes that I had harvested from my own garden a week ago, and quartered them. The potatoes went into the pot as well. I also have the carrots I had made the bone broth with. They were sliced smaller and added back.

The last step before the next cooking stage, was to add thyme and tarragon, which I have fresh and growing in my garden.

Everything cooked together another two hours.

I then got out my little Cuisinart immersion blender and emulsified everything in the pot as it was cooking. I kept the soup on low, stirring often, and let it cook down another hour.

It was now cooked down enough that I tasted it and I adjusted the salt and pepper and added a little more seasoning. I even added a very small cheese rind. Just to add another layer of flavor.

The soup tastes very good and this is my spin on potato leek soup. I have not added any cream. A lot of the recipes I consulted before creating my own don’t call for cream.

The soup will now cool and then it’ll be put away and after the flavors meld for a day or so, I will serve it for dinner.

Bon appétit 😋

peter’s peasant soup

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Every time around this year and even into the winter my late father would make a soup. It was a pure peasant soup. It would be based around what he found fresh down on 9th street at the Italian market and from the local merchants there.

The soup would have cabbage, potatoes or turnips, onion, celery, carrots, tomatoes, fresh herbs, beans, and something cured like a small salami – a cured sausage. He liked soppressata. He would cut it into little chunks or rounds.

We were over at a friend’s house the other day and they have this amazing kitchen garden like I dream about but have no room for. So they gave us a bunch of fresh vegetables including Swiss Chard and fresh kale. Today’s vegetable box from Doorstep Dairy had a beautiful purple cabbage. So I knew I was making soup even though it’s somewhat humid out.

My father would often use a beef stock base but a lot of the time it was a chicken stock base. So last night’s roast chicken carcass went into the instant pot this morning to make bone broth. I also tossed in a little salt and pepper and zaatar spice blend.

While bone broth was cooking and cooling I chopped up all the vegetables. I threw them into my big Great Jones “Big Deal” pot. I really love their cookware and I have a few pieces now. I added a few cups of water, maybe four. I added salt and pepper and some fresh herbs. This morning I had picked basil, thyme, sage so that is what I used.

I left the vegetables almost completely covered on low and just let them cook down for probably 60 minutes. The tomatoes I used were a bunch of fresh cherry tomatoes from the garden. Probably about enough to fit in a pint container but I halved them. When the bone broth was finished (I just hit the setting for broth or soup) I fished out all the bones and the gizzards and disposed of them and added the broth to the pot.

Then I added a chopped up a small whole dry salami that I had purchased at the Tasty Table Market & Catering in Berwyn. After that I drained two cans of beans and tossed those in. You can use whatever canned beans you like. Things like cannellini beans, pinto beans, even black-eyed peas.

Now the soup sits on a simmer until some point this afternoon when I will start to cool it down and put into containers. Some I will freeze and some I will use now.

I have to tell you the soup smells really good. And it’s also a smell that I have memories of. Of course I’m a little more about cleaning up the kitchen as I go along then my father was and when he would make one of these soups it would look like a bomb exploded in the kitchen afterwards.

This soup is always best when it sits for a couple of days and then you heat it up because it gives a chance for the flavors to completely meld . All you do is serve it with a little crusty bread for the table and some grated cheese on top. It’s a basic peasant soup and it’s loaded with vegetables and you don’t really need anything else.

I hope you can follow along as to how I made this. There is no formal recipe it’s just some thing that my father made and his mother made and who knows how many other relatives in his family made.

I used my small Instant Pot to make the bone broth if you are curious about how much chicken broth to add. The small Instant Pot makes 3 quarts of broth. Now the soup condenses and cooks down because I let it simmer on a very low setting for a few hours.

Buon appetito!