Cook Chill: the perfect complement for your soups, stews, bisque's & chowders!
Soup has origins that date back to primitive times, and include heating rocks by fire and then dropping the rocks into liquids to heat. By adding ingredients to this basic stock, this practice has evolved to include the soups, stews, bisques, and chowders that we enjoy today. But do you know what makes a soup a soup or a chowder a chowder?
Since January is National Soup Month, we thought we would take a look at the differences and similarities of these varieties.
Soups
Let's start with some basics. First, in the soup world there are two basic types: clear soups and thick soups, with clear soups typically used as a base to other types of soups. Think of chicken broth used as a base for chicken noodle soup. By contrast, cream soups are thick soup varieties. The process of pureeing an ingredient, then adding milk or cream creates the thicker consistency. Potatoes can also aid in this process with their natural starchiness to help thicken as they are simmered and pureed along with other vegetables.
Stews, bisques and chowders are generally classified as soups, but they don’t fit neatly into the two soup categories because they’re combinations of both.
Stews
Stews are a heartier variety with meats and vegetables simmered over longer periods of time. The addition of flour helps to thicken the broth, or adding a roux consisting of equal parts flour and fat (butter or oil), which is blended until smooth and cooked to brown. As the stew cooks, the meats and vegetables absorb the broth, resulting in less liquid than a soup when finished cooking.
Bisques
Bisques made from crustaceans such as lobster, shrimp, crab, and crayfish. The shellfish gets cooked twice, once in their shells, and again after removing the meat from the shells. The addition of sauteed celery, onions and carrots is common to round out the ingredients. Again a roux is added, along with some cream to thicken and make the creamy broth bisques are known for.
Chowders
Chowders are most notably made with clams, but can also be made with other seafood such as scallops, shrimp, crab, or even cod or salmon. Chowders are rich, creamy soups that typically contain chunky potatoes and other vegetables.
The Common Denominator
So what do all of these types of soups have in common? All of these varieties are perfect food candidates for the Cook Chill method of cooking, storing, and retherming large batch quantities for restaurant and foodservice establishments.
If you are looking for a proven cost effective way to store large batches of soup, Plascon offers the perfect solution for packaging and storing soups, Cook Chill bags! Whether you are looking to package soups on pints, quarts, gallons, or larger, Plascon offers a variety of bag sizes to meet your storage needs.
To find out more about Cook Chill Bags and available products, please contact us today!
