Stange soup / stew inventions, share yours.

Unalaskawoman shared a neat "stupid soup" invention in another thread. Neat story, neat recipe!

If you have stumbled upon a good soup / stew invention please share it, and the story behind it, with your fellow roadfooders.

Here is my newest weird invention. The family converges at my house each year for a big neighborhood halloween party. I had nothing cooked. What to do? Maybe a big pot of spagetti? Nop, no spaghetti in the cubbord. I had a big bag of pasta shells, hmm? Lots of kids coming, what will they eat? I had a can of Manwich and plenty of jar pasta sauce so here is what I ended up doing. Got my BIG pot out, chopped some onion and bell pepper, thawed 3lbs of burger, seasoned w/ salt, pepper, garlic, and cooked w/ the vegies. Next I added the can of Manwich, a jar of Ragu Tradetional. I cooked the shells but wanted to get the brew right before I added them. hmm, kinda bland but not bad. Ahhh, Rotel! Our kids don't mind kinda spicy so I added the Rotel and let it simmer. Now the brew was sweet from the Manwich and spicy from the Rotel. Now I added the shells till it looked right and wala, the kids and adults both liked it. Well, they said they did anyway. Hey, I liked it. Some of the adults added pickled jalapenos to their bowl, as did I. The kids named this "sweet and spicy stew".
Joe

I don't think I ever made a "strange soup or stew". Ok, everybody go ahead and say it, "She's the food snob!" Not really. For soups we like anything with chicken (or turkey) and vegetables, southwestern beef and black bean, clam or halibut chowder, various kinds of bean soups with ham hocks, potato leek, broccoli and cheddar, Italian lentil, wedding soup, and the list goes on and on.

For stews I would say we love Boeuf Bourguinon, cassoulet, pot au feu, and Moroccan lamb stew (also called couscous in France, and yes, it is served with couscous.

When we were on hard times,we used to take canned turkey vegetable soup and throw some now defunct white Velveeta into it.... it was creamy, cheesy, and darned good!

So Lee, this means you never made a soup with Manwich? I know, just joking. If I knew how to cook like you I wouldn't ether. I think I saw a recipe for Bourguion here somewhere. I would like to try making that sometime.

Jenn, I never knew about the white Velveta. To bad it's gone.
Joe

I use Manwich for empanada filling.
You can make a meat pie using Manwich, brown meat, add manwich and other seasoning, (keep it saucy) spoon in pie plate, top with mashed potatoes, into the oven 350 for about 30 min till the top is a bit crusty, kids will love it.

Johnny Marzetti!!

Do you know what it is?

It's basically a sweet/spicy meat sauce, mixed with pasta {macaroni, penne, rotini, etc.}, topped with cheddar cheese, and baked {like, ahh, a pasta bake/lasagne [yet not layered like lasagne]}.

Johnny Marzetti is popular with "my family" , in the Midwest.

Is it popular anywhere else? Or did my mom make it up? We serve it at all weddings {along with lasagne}.

Also, I had a friend who used to cook up some ground beef, crumbled, added a can of Rotel, and some Velveeta cheese. He served it over noodles.

It was some damned good eating!!!

I never have heard of that Soozy but I'm way down in Texas. Must be good though! Maybe Johnny gave the recipe to your mom, or? Any chance for us to learn how to make it?
Joe

quote:

Originally posted by fabulousoyster

I use Manwich for empanada filling.
You can make a meat pie using Manwich, brown meat, add manwich and other seasoning, (keep it saucy) spoon in pie plate, top with mashed potatoes, into the oven 350 for about 30 min till the top is a bit crusty, kids will love it.

OKAY~~
This sounds like a recipe I will attempt. Sounds Yummy!!!

I am way too obsessed with this subject!!

quote:

Originally posted by PapaJoe8

I never have heard of that Soozy but I'm way down in Texas. Must be good though! Maybe Johnny gave the recipe to your mom, or? Any chance for us to learn how to make it?
Joe

Joe~
I'll try to get you specifics, however, it's just a sweet/spicy meat sauce {pretty sure there's some chili powder involved}, mixed with any pasta {macaroni, rotini based}, poured into a big old sheet pan, and topped with cheddar cheese, and baked!!

I'll e-mail mom and get the recipe.

I worked in a country diner a while back and took over the lunch buffet. I got a lot of requests for stuffed cabbage and bell peppers.
I came across a bunch of fresh garden peppers cheap and was going to do just that. Told my help to halve them but not drawing a diagram received them diced. I had everthing else about ready to go. Hmmm, might as well give this a go.
Took the peppers with some onion and and a liberal dose of garlic powder and cooked with the ground beef. Strained the fat and added the sauce I'd made for stewing the stuffed peppers, plus a can of tomatoe sauce and a can of V-8 and simmered. Just a little sugar, some more garlic with onion powder and rice(Sometimes I'll serve it over rice like gumbo). Poof...Stuffed Pepper Soup ! It went over pretty good. When you get encore requests you've done something right.
I still make it around the house when it gets cold. At home I'll use red and yellow peppers as well just cause it looks so damn pretty. I like it it with garlic or any crunchy hot bread and Tabasco. It'll keep you warm going to the mailbox and back. I think if I'd have had a #10 can of that Manwich sauce I may have used that instead of the V-8 and dab of sugar. I may give it a whirl just to see.
I make a lot of soups off the cuff but this was the first I'd made commercially on a hope and a prayer with what I had in a quick pinch.
It's real good topped of with graded parmesan or even monterey or brick.

What's Manwich? What's Velveeta?

PapaJoe8, here's a fabulous recipe for Boeuf Bourguignon. Of course, my recipes are never too precise but you'll get the gist.

Take 1/2 lb. of bacon, cut into very thin pieces (lardons), render in a Dutch oven until crispy. Add 1/2 lb. of pearl onions and brown in the bacon fat. Remove all ingredients from oven, add 2 lbs. cubed beef stew meat and brown thoroughly. Add about 1/3 C flour and brown with the meat. Add 1/2 bottle red wine, and enough beef stock to cover, add the lardons and pearl onions. Of course, salt and pepper to taste. Cook until tender, this will take about 2 hours. I like to put it in the oven (the heat is more even). Lastly take 1/2 lb. of white mushrooms, slice and saute and add to the Bourguignon. As with any stew.......let it SIT before digging in!

Pat, fast thinkin and sounds real good! The Manwich amy not work for everything. Your pepper soup sounds good like it is. We do the same with cabbage, "cabbage rolls unroled" we call it.

Thanks Soozy, I am eagerly awaiting that sweet and spicy meat sauce.

Llee, LOL, and thanks for the recipe. It is on my list of things to cook.
Joe

Here's an idea: one day my grandmother (great Italian cook!) was making beef stew and she ran out of red wine to add to it. So she took my father's best Scotch whiskey and poured that in instead. Mmmmmmm

I suppose the strangest thing I've made was something we refer to as Chinese Soup. I was going for egg drop soup, but halfway through I realized it wasn't going to turn out right, so I improvised. I used canned chicken broth, added some grated ginger root, soy sauce, chopped onion, a couple of smashed garlic cloves, canned green peas, water chestnuts, and frozen broccoli. We put it in bowls and crunched up packaged corn tortillas in it. It was good.

Soozy, I've seen an old casserole recipe called "Yon Mazetah" which is nearly the same as you describe.

I love to cook and am always amazed at the simple recipes that people have for something that sound so good. Llee your recipe sounds amazing. I know what I'll be making soon. Thanks for sharing!!!!

NYNM, I bet your dad was not so happy about his best scotch being gone. But... I hope he liked he scotish stew!

Skylor, that sounds real good. What can we call it? Maybe chinese tortilla soup? But... what was in the first half?

Digger, Yon Mozentah, wonder who invented that?

KK, of coarse... all of Llee's recipes are good! Now for one of yours.
Joe

as usual, i made a giant pot of chicken soup
and the hubster was getting tired of it.
so i added a half cup of flour, added a bag of peas and carrots,
added (i know, i know) a can of mushrooms,
and viola..chicken pot pie stew.
he loved it.
go figure.

Thats like leting the soup evolve Xannie. I get tired of things and do that also. How much soup to that half cup of flour? Pot Pie stew sounds good! Hmm, at what point did it become stew?
Joe

lol..i had about 2 gallons left.
well,the longer i cooked it, the thicker it got.
cooked it til the raw flour taste was gone.
to this day i can't make less than 5 gallons.
it's the restaurant in me

Xannie, I hear ya on the 5 gallon pots of soup. Ditto here. I use my caning pot when making soups or chili. Stuff goes so fast I never get any for myself.

I have a BIG pot but sometimes it overflows into anouther pot. I hate when that happens! Vic, you goa get your share from the taster bowls!

Thanks Xannie, 1/2 cup to 2 gal. Gotta have the pie taste! Hey, 3 gal. got eaten before it became pie stew.
Joe

I recall doing something strange to ramen.. cook the beef kind, drain most of the broth out and mix in ketchup and mayonnaise...it's not bad if you get the mixture just right.

jennifer wins for the strangest recipe.

There are tons of raymen recipes on the net. It's a popular thing w/ lots of folks. Maybe we need a thread here, hmmm, maybe not? Jenn, yes strange but that actually sounds kinda good to me. I might add a dash of horseradish. They now make lots a flavors of that stuff like shrimp and also chili, endless options!

There is a real good cabbage soup recipe at the "time for soup" thread.

Ok, anymore soup/stew invention stories?
Joe

Here's a soup invention I'll never be able to re-create.

We had our wedding outdoors on Cape Cod in the Fall. We hired a friend as caterer, but if we had a theme for our wedding it was that we, and our close friends and family, all made things for the wedding (invitiation, dress, cake, flowers, centerpieces, etc.) Short story, our "theme" was saving money. I decided that in the Fall we needed soup.

I figured something had to be vegetarian, but I don't do veggie very well so I pretty much followed a recipe and came up with a sort of minestrone/pasta "fazhool" that everyone liked.

For the other, I figured that on the Cape I needed seafood. I couldn't afford to make lobster bisque for everyone (and after all, not everyone likes lobster ) and I knew I couldn't make a clam chowder that would be the best everyone had ever tasted. So I came up with a seafood bisque/chowder.

I used two bases. One was the lobster bisque from Howard Mitcham's "Provincetown Seafood Cookbook" (possibly the touchstone of Lower Cape seafood cooking). The other was fish stock from Bernard Clayton, Jr.'s "The Complete Book of Soups and Stews." At the time, I lived near Legal Sea Foods main processing plant and retail store and had a source for legitimate seafood, although I think I bought the lobsters on sale out of the tank at the pretty new Star Market. I know I had clams and two kinds of fish filets. Knowing me, one had to be Haddock or Cod (the kings of chowder fish) but I think the other was something odd and maybe not native to New England. Something the fish guys at Legal said was great chowder fish.

Beyond that, it's kind of a fog. My Mother-in-Law was staying with us at the time and decorating the cake (it's the one with ivy trailing up the tiers that was on the cover of Gourmet magazine in the late 80s or early 90s). The cat was due for his shots and when I walked in with bags 'o fish he was hauled out. Boy! was he p.o.'d. I was kind of thinking maybe I could slip out for a cigar, like maybe to Havana.

I do know that I had about three gallons of stock in my two biggest stockpots and had a hell of a time figuring out how to strain them out so I could use the pots to proceed with making soup. I know my vegetable base had leeks, and I used the greens in the fish stock. There may have been shallots and/or onions in the base, as well. I probably used potatoes and might have put the peels in the fish broth. It's possible corn was involved, as you can sometimes still get fresh corn in our area in October.

Somehow I came up with two large pots of simmering mixed broth and veggies. I know I added a pinch of saffron, as a touch of saffron helps bring out lobster flavor (but too much overwhelms it). Then I layed the filets on top and cooked them until they would break, then the clams.

I froze it all and froze the lobster meat seperately. I instructed the caterer to defrost the soup in her cauldron, add the lobster, then cream.

To this day, people ask me for the recipe.

Too tired to cook but have a can of chick peas?

Saute in olive oil: 2 cloves garlic, few sprigs rosemary, 1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes.

Add 1 can chick peas. Add 1 diced small tomato.
2 cups canned chicken broth. 1 cup water.
Bring to boil. Add some ditalini pasta.
When serving in soup bowl, pass the parmesan cheese.

****************************************************
Too tired to cook but have some condensed soups around?

1 can condensed asparagus soup
1 can condensed cream of mushroom
3 tbs dry sherry

Add 2 cups light cream. Add 1 can lobster or crab meat.
Heat it up, but don't BOIL it.

Serve with white cheddar cheese crackers or oyster style biscuits, or those chowder crackers.

I can do wonders when I'm tired.

yeah, you can write a cookbook
and call it "too tired to cook book"

quote:

Originally posted by fabulousoyster

Too tired to cook but have a can of chick peas?

Saute in olive oil: 2 cloves garlic, few sprigs rosemary, 1/2 tsp hot pepper flakes.

Add 1 can chick peas. Add 1 diced small tomato.
2 cups canned chicken broth. 1 cup water.
Bring to boil. Add some ditalini pasta.
When serving in soup bowl, pass the parmesan cheese.


I can do wonders when I'm tired.

Wow.. that sounds good.
I love chick peas, and not knowing what to do with them when I buy a can, I usually just throw them on a salad or eat them right out of the can.
Yeah...I know......
No class at all........
LOL>....