S4E30 Ask Jack – Soups

Geoff Allix
Welcome to the 10th episode of Ask Jack, I can’t believe it’s 10 episodes. Joining us on this episode is
Jack McNulty, celebrity chef, and we’re going to be discussing the topic of soups. So welcome, Jack.
Jack McNulty
Thanks, Geoff. Yeah, 10 episodes? Really? Yeah, that happened.
Geoff Allix
Yeah, we’ve covered all food now.
Jack McNulty
Exactly. Well, you know, soups is one of those things that I think it’s just an excellent starting point on
anybody beginning their OMS journey. It’s just packed with vegetables, fiber rich, they’re easy to make
OMS. They’re easy to make, in large quantities of batch cooking is your thing. You can freeze a lot of
them. I mean, there’s just so many good reasons to begin with soups. And so I’m glad we’re tackling
that that topic today.
Geoff Allix
So I’ll get straight into it. There’s the first question that came up. And this, this applies more probably
more, not just to soups, but to more foods. So are there any OMS compliant vegetable stock cubes or
powders? They all seem to contain oils, because I mean, an amateur chef, it’s such a time saving thing
to just stick a vegetable stock cube in.
Jack McNulty
Yeah, it’s always one of those things, you know, which side of the value equation are you going to fall
on? You know, and you always got to weigh how much you want to control all of the ingredients. How
much you want to control the taste, versus the time and the cost. And ultimately, the taste again, on the
other side of the equation. So it kind of depends on that. In terms of the cubes and powders that are
available in the market these days, I think oil is probably your least concern when it comes to those
products, I think sodium would be a bigger concern. Those are usually laden with lots and lots of
sodium, that’s how they keep them on the shelves, as well as other chemicals, you know, which are to
me are a little bit more concerning. I think, overall, most of the cubes and powders loosely fall within the
guidelines of OMS. So it’s perfectly okay to go ahead and use them. Having said that, I think you are
giving up a lot of control in terms of the ingredients that you’re putting into your food, you’re certainly
increasing your sodium in many cases, as well as probably some other chemicals. It’s interesting, when
I make my own broth, and then you make exactly the same thing using a cube or a powder. The first
thing that you notice immediately, is the aroma is significantly different between the two. And that
should actually be a clue as to which one I would prefer putting in my body. Now in terms of the time
element. Yeah, a lot of people say, “oh, you know, I don’t have time to make my own vegetable broth.”
Well, vegetable broth takes all of maybe 30 minutes to make as you could put it together while watching
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a sitcom on TV in the background. You know, and it’s just one of those things that you can make in a
large quantity, always have on hand, you can freeze it easily. And it doesn’t really require a huge effort.
In terms of cost: Probably not that much more significant than than buying cubes and powders and that
sort of thing.
Geoff Allix
There are I mean, in the UK at least there is a brand that was put on to me by another OMSer they’re
called Nine meals from Anarchy. But they are now tied up with a celebrity chef here called Hugh
Fearnley-Whittingstall who’s generally pretty good with his cooking. And they do seem very good
actually, it’s all organic vegetables and some some extra virgin olive oil and they say half the sodium of
near typical stock cube, so they seem to be pretty good. So there are some I think it’s just a lot of
shopping around. It’s not available in supermarket.
Jack McNulty
There are good quality, decent quality, stocks and cubes that are out there. But the simple fact is you
still have to get that product to sit on a shelf for an extended period of time. And in order to do that you
are going to need to have or use things like sodium, but more worrisome, probably some of the other
things that are going to go on in that product to create the stability for the shelf life.
Geoff Allix
I mean these ones don’t have shelf life. Once you open the jar, so the jars because they can, I don’t
know how they do it, but jars can keep for a long time. And then once you open the jar, it’s got to be
refrigerated and yes. Whereas the other ones are, it’s a little box, it’s in your cupboard for 15 years.
Jack McNulty
And I suspect you’re going to be paying a whole lot more for the higher quality one as well. So the
question then becomes, why bother? Why not just make your own and have it on hand? You got to
refrigerate it also.
Geoff Allix
Yeah. That is connection to the next question. I think you’ve probably answered it. What’s the benefit of
making a stock from scratch to control flavor? So yeah, so Pam Schartner was asking the benefits, I
think we’ve probably covered that.
Jack McNulty
Just real quick, I mean, for those that don’t know, in terms of making your own vegetable stock, let me
just real real quickly run through how I would approach that. And so you always want to start out with
your aromatic vegetables. And for the most part, that’s carrots, onions, celery, sometimes leek, and
sometimes garlic. And you basically just get them cut up, you can chuck them all into a food processor,
and chop them up fine, in which case, you get the flavor quicker than if they’re cut up in larger chunks.
And I always use the skin, you know, you just wash them really well, a lot of the flavor is going to be in
the skin. And you’re going to be straightening it out anyway, at the end of the process. Then you can
just add other things, you know, some of the things I like to add to add a lot of color, and flavor is sun
dried tomatoes, maybe some piece of kombu, which is very effective. Parsley, bay leaves, cloves, a
little bit of black pepper, those are things that are important, sometimes other ingredients, virtually any
vegetable really, mushrooms, fennel, tomatoes, the only vegetable I would stay away from is probably
anything that’s related to the cabbage family, I was going to add a little bit too much of a flavor a little
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too strong. In terms of what you’re keeping, what I do is sweat everything in a small amount of water for
maybe 10, 15 minutes, just to get it all nice and soft. And then I put enough water just to come right up
to the top, maybe one or two centimeters above the vegetable level, which is about a half inch to an
inch. And I bring it up to a boil, reduce the heat, cover the pot and let it simmer for about 45 minutes.
That’s it, I just turned it off. And then I leave it on the stovetop overnight. And the reason I do that is it
just slowly it’s like making tea, it just slowly infuses all of those flavors, everything kind of melds
together. And the next morning, I just strain it all out. And there I have my stock, it’s really a very simple
process. And that’s how I choose to do it.
Geoff Allix
Okay, and then you can freeze it.
Jack McNulty
Or you can put it in ice cube tray. So you can have little, little ice cube vegetable broth, which makes an
interesting cocktail, by the way.
Geoff Allix
And so going on from that, would you concentrate it as well, I mean, you can easily get ones which are
highly concentrated. I mean, how concentrated are you making it?
Jack McNulty
That’s why I cook it with a lid because concentration is done through evaporation and I like to control
that evaporation. So I find that adding the water to the vegetables is key right right up front. So you
don’t want to add too much, it’ll be just too diluted. But if you just go right up to the top of the
vegetables, there’s really no reason than to concentrate it. And of course you don’t have any seasoning
in there. There’s no fat in there whatsoever. And it it lives perfectly well overnight at room temperature
without any problem whatsoever. And I don’t find that there’s a reason to reduce it down or concentrate
it for making a soup or a stew or for whatever use you’re you’re planning on having the vegetable stock
for. I find actually it’s just delicious on its own as a soup in itself, you know, just to have a glass of it,
which is what I tend to do after straining it out.
Geoff Allix
There’s a question here from Carlene Slade, “how can I modify basic soup to batch cook but still have
some variety for the fussy eaters?” So I mean I do this quite often I’ll make up two different soups and
then I’ll make them up for my sort of lunches and I’ll have a free freeze them and then I’ll alternate. But
if you want to have a bit more variety, is there sort of basic soup that you could make that you could
then use as a base If you like?
Jack McNulty
Well, it’s a it’s an interesting question. First of all, I don’t understand what a fussy eater might be that
could be anything is that someone that’s wanting all children or OMS or just doesn’t like certain
ingredients?
Geoff Allix
I suspect it’s probably all children
Jack McNulty
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This could be, you know, or someone that doesn’t like anything green. The way I approach that in the
way I’ve approached it in the past, is think of putting together a soup in modular steps. So you put
together a broth first and you just have that, you have that on hand, then you can put together some
vegetables, for instance, you can roast them, you can blanch them, you can prepare them however you
wish, and just have those separate, you can have beans on hand, even just opening a can of beans, or
making some beans, you can cook some, partially cook some pasta, and put it off to the side, the same
thing with rice, you can use leftover rice, for instance, and have it off to the side, then you have all of
the piece parts to putting together basically a soup, which you can keep chunky and hearty. Or if you
prefer, you can put all of those vegetables into the broth, bring it up to a high temperature and then just
puree it. And then you have a whole different kind of soup that you’re dealing with. So there’s lots of
different options. When you think of soup, in terms of modular components, and then just putting them
together, sort of at the last minute, based on your attitude, what other people like, what you have on
hand, that sort of thing. And if you did that, effectively, you can really use a broth all week long, and
have a different soup every night.
Geoff Allix
And under the specific type of soup, is there a good way to make OMS compliant bisques and
chowders that that would typically include dairy? They don’t all include dairy do they?
Jack McNulty
I think the simple answer to that is yes. The more complicated answer would be let’s first investigate
what a bisque and chowder are for those that may or may not know. So traditionally, a bisque was
made with shellfish. And it was usually thickened with cooked rice, maybe a rice flour, or in some cases
bread, even toasted bread. And so it was basically this the broth that was made out of the shellfish, the
shellfish meat, if you will. And then it was just all cooked with a rice, starchy rice that would just
basically sort of dissolve into some sort of thickening agent. That’s kind of what a bisque is. Of course,
these days people refer to any sort of pureed soup as a bisque because they think it’s a cool culinary
term. A chowder on the other hand, is although most of them these days are made with milk or cream,
traditionally they weren’t. It was traditionally made with seafood, always had some kind of pork product,
potatoes and onions and it was just sort of cooked together. Utilizing the starch from the potatoes to
sort of thicken the ingredient to thicken the soup. And you’d have this sort of kind of hearty, chunky
soup that has the seafood and the potatoes and the other ingredients in it. So to make it OMS safe if
you wanted to make a bisque, the best way to do that as you start out by just taking your aromatics,
which is usually just onions and carrots and celery, sometimes just onions and just slowly cooking them
in a little bit of water or no liquid whatsoever, just to soften them and that’s really a crucial step. Maybe
adding a little bit of a tomato paste to keep it a little bit authentic, that was often done. And then you
want to think in terms of how am I going to thicken the liquid once I get beyond that step and that’s
usually done with a roux and for those that don’t know a roux is equal parts fat and flour or starch,
mixed in with the aromatics or you put some rice, in starchy rice like a risotto rice works fabulously well
for making a bisque in with the aromatics, start cooking it, adding your broth and then it’s pureed and
strained and then that’s it and then you finish it however you want to finish it. So that we would be a
typical way to make up bisque. Chowder, on the other hand, again starts as most soups do with
sweating your aromatics. Now I use the term sweating. And a lot of people like to use the term water
sautéing, and that sort of thing. I prefer sweating, I think is a little bit more descriptive. Because really,
you’re trying to encourage the liquid out of the vegetable and letting it sort of slowly stew in its own
liquids rather than adding a lot of water to the pot. So anyway, you sweat the aromatics, you add some
vegetables, usually with potato pieces, maybe it is just the potato cubed up, and then you add a fat and
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you make a roux as well. And again, maybe one or two tablespoons of an oil is enough. And one or two
tablespoons of either flour or starch either way, and then just adding your broth and cooking it all up.
You can add a little bit of plant base cream or milk at the end if you want that sort of modern day look
and feel of what a chowder might be. And so that’s how that’s how I would do it. And the relatively
simple and they’re quite tasty, actually. So adding dairy free milk or cream at the end. Yeah. And I would
tend to stick with something that’s probably higher and in fat content, like a soy milk, you could add a
little bit of soy yogurt. Also, the danger there when you add the plant based milks is for it to curdle,
especially if you have an acid in there and mixed with the heat. So you definitely don’t want to bring it
up to a boil again after adding those.
Geoff Allix
Okay, and this is a question that came from someone I know actually Sue Allaway. And it’s very
interesting to me as well, because I make soup with a saucepan and a blender. I think that’s it. So she’s
asking what kitchen equipment would you recommend for soup making? Because I’m quite tempted by
this. My mother actually has she has a soup maker. So you’ve got a number of different things soup
maker, pressure cooker, a slow cooker, a saucepan (traditional) and Wonderbag, which I’ve not heard
of? I don’t know if you have, just bearing in mind the cost of energy at present. Yeah. Which is a good
point actually is because some of these things if it’s cooking away for hours, is that really expensive for
electricity? Because we have to think about these things now. So yeah, which equipment would you
recommend and why?
Jack McNulty
The first thing I would do is I would recommend a large pot. And so a large, heavy bottom pot, I think is
the very first thing I would go for. It needs to have enough room for soup to expand. So you need to
have it I think somewhere up to five liters, which would be about five quarts, just so you can make
enough at a time. I think it needs to be taller than wider. And the reason for that is a taller will control the
amount of evaporation. You do it a little bit slower. You don’t necessarily want all of the liquid to go out
of the pot at once. So that’s the reason I would prefer and many restaurants as well have the taller soup
pan as opposed to wider. What I find really important is a heavy bottom. So stainless steel works really
well. Thin bottom pots tend to develop hotspots and that will scorch ingredients on the bottom. That
becomes very important when you’re using things like lentils or something of this nature that likes to
sink to the bottom and if they grab onto one of those hotspots, they’re going to scorch they’re going to
burn and basically that will ruin the flavor of the entire soup. I think that’s the place to start if you are
interested in making soups. Helpful are spatulas, ladles. I find a handheld immersion blender quite
useful in making soups they can usually puree really quickly without a lot of mess. Of course I use a
blender as well, food processor is sometimes helpful for chopping up vegetables and a strainer. Just a
nice inexpensive strainer. Sometimes you want to especially with cream soups, put it through a strainer
to create sort of a velvety texture. It’s very elegant and it’s quite nice. In terms of the other, pressure
cooker I’ve used to make soups. It will bring you about a third third of the time, so it will speed up the
process by about 1/3. It doesn’t bring a huge amount in terms of making soups, other than just buys
you a little bit more time. That’s that’s generally it, it will cook everything rather rapidly. And the danger
there is overcooking with a pressure cooker, slow cookers and Insta pots and things like a Thermomix
and that sort of thing. That’s basically when you’re just, you know, you’re you’re either gonna work in
stages like you would with a pot, where you chuck everything in and turn it on and walk away, go to
work and when you come home, supposedly everything is done. The problem with that is it’s going to
cook things at different points. So sometimes you want to cook ingredients for a short period, rather
than a long period, just to maintain a texture. Sometimes you want to control the evaporation,
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sometimes, you know, there are points in the soup making process where maybe a pot is a little bit
more effective than, say a slow cooker or an Instapot or something like that. But that’s sort of minimal,
and I think that’s kind of dependent on everybody’s sort of personal desire or their schedule or how
much time they can actually spend in the kitchen. A lot of people think soups take forever to make.
Some soups you can make from start to finish in less than a half hour. And some soups do require a
little bit more time maybe up to a couple of hours or something like that. But generally, it’s not going to
be much more than that. The Wonder Bag is sort of an interesting thing. I don’t know where that was
developed probably America. It sounds kind of American. It’s basically the idea is to keep the food hot.
So if you’re cooking your food, I don’t know how long it keeps it hot, but basically it’s just sort of odd
looking bag that goes around and above a top and bottom of the soup container and it keeps everything
hot. The problem is it also keeps it cooking. And so once you think your soup is done if you want to use
that sort of product to keep everything nice and hot, just keep in mind it’s also cooking everything so by
the time you get to it, it might have overcooked everything.
Geoff Allix
So the next one from Pam Schartner is a interesting one. What are some of your favorite OMS
compliant Asian soups? And she lists ramen laksa, pho, miso wanton, etc. So I think I mean for me, all
of them at different times.
Jack McNulty
You’ve selected D all of the above.
Geoff Allix
I’ve traveled a lot in Asia. So yeah. I love that in Vietnam where you just getting around and people are
making fresh pho you know, yeah, incredible.
Jack McNulty
Yeah, I’m a big fan of, well, I’m a big fan of all types of soup, really. But with Asian soups, when I’m
making them, I tend to make miso soup probably more than anything, although I do like a good ramen
and I’m pretty happy making a ramen as well. I think the key with making a really tasty Asian style soup
is the same could be said for pretty much all soups is you really have to have a very tasty broth. That’s
a starting point. And really use fresh ingredients and try as hard as you possibly can, not to overcook
anything. And so I think that that’s kind of it I mean, an Asian soups are going to have different flavoring
ingredients. And so you’re going to be using things like soya, like soya sauce, for instance, maybe you
might be using some different spices to bring out the flavors a little bit more maybe make it spicy with
adding chili and things like that. You might be using lemongrass or you know, popular of course is
coconut. But there are ways around that until you can get around the coconut issue rather simply.
Geoff Allix
Are you talking about time so I’m we make random quite often. And it’s really quick. If you’ve got the
stock, then actually you don’t overcook the vegetables. It’s a lot of vegetables are actually added fresh.
They’re not even cooked.
Jack McNulty
What is this 15 minute?
Geoff Allix
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It’s really quick.
Jack McNulty
It’s just the same as making a pasta dish and in essence it is the same.
Geoff Allix
Yeah, and miso as well. I’m certainly not suggesting that people try and make their own miso paste. I
don’t even know if that’s possible.
Jack McNulty
While it’s certainly possible, but I wouldn’t recommend it either. It’s a little bit involved and it’s so easy to
just go buy different types of misos, and there are many different kinds of miso available. So it becomes
sort of an interesting prospect to mix and match different miso products to create a different flavor and
soup. Of course, the important part in a miso soup is making a dashi at the beginning and traditionally
dashi is made was sort of a dried fish product. But there are many different ways to make a vegan
dashi if you’re not interested in having the fish element in there. There’s quite tasty as well. And yeah,
miso soup is fantastic. You can add whatever you want to it, I mean a little bit of tofu, a little bit of
spinach leaves, spring onions, all those sorts of things and create a soup rather rapidly.
Geoff Allix
And which is coming on to actually what is the quickest and most nutritious soup?
Jack McNulty
I just gave that answer.
Geoff Allix
Well, I think a ramen, I mean, it’s those sort of things. Because I mean, you haven’t overcooked, you’ve
basically taken loads of fresh vegetables. I mean, it’s a really healthy meal. Because it’s like as many
fresh vegetables and the kids that eat as well.
Jack McNulty
Exactly. You know, is it because of the pasta?
Geoff Allix
Oh, in the ramen? So yeah, I mean, I don’t know. I think it’s because I’ve been to restaurants and they
say oh, like, yeah, there’s an Asian restaurant in the UK called Wagamama. And they say they really
like the ramen in there. And so I think it’s come from that.
Jack McNulty
The noodles do have a play in that, I think but it’s just the flavor as well. But I think you’re right, and this
just really gets to the whole core of making soup, it can be very rapid, and taste very fresh, be very
nutritious, all of those elements come into play, it doesn’t have to be anything that’s really hugely
involved and it doesn’t really take a lot of equipment to make a ramen either, you know, a knife and a
pot is basically all you’re going to need. As far as just I had another thought on the nutritious soup. One
of the soups I like to make is I use whole or split red or yellow lentils quite often to make soups. And
those work really nicely because they completely cook and break down in about 30 minutes. When you
cook them in a liquid, and then they turn into this really nice creamy consistency, which you can leave
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and have a little bit of texture in your soup, or you can completely puree it and make it into something
very smooth. You can add all kinds of different elements to that sort of lentil soup, different spices,
different vegetables added to them. Sometimes even adding potato and some of them is really
outstanding. It’s just a lot of different ways. And of course, that’s just that’s a fiber bomb with lots of
nutrition. And, you know, when I make it, I make a big round and it will easily last the whole week. And
you can add you know, we were talking about the batch cooking earlier, you can add different elements
to it during the week to change it completely. And I just think it’s just one of those types of soups that’s
very simple to make. And really, really nutritious.
Geoff Allix
And on the opposite side of this opposite to the quickest soup from Pam is what soups could be made
in a slow cooker because I think probably not just a slow cooker, but I guess a soup maker would be a
similar thing. You know, which ones could you just think, okay, all those ingredients and go in there, I
can leave it for the day come back.
Jack McNulty
What do you mean by soup maker?
Geoff Allix
So when you have things I don’t know if they’re international, but you basically it has everything you
need to make the soup. So you’ve basically got a an electric pot, that you put all of your uncooked
vegetables in, ingredients and water and everything in there. You shut up, you turn it on, and you either
do it straight away, or you put on a timer. And then it cooks the vegetables and it has a blender as well.
And they typically have different settings. So you could have either completely smooth or you could
have a chunky. And so it will cook everything and it’ll blend everything and at the end of it seeps ready.
But everything has been cooked for exactly the same amount of time.
Jack McNulty
Yeah, which could or could not be a problem in some cases.
Geoff Allix
I think they probably come with I mean, my mother’s got one. Because the recipe books they have with
them, obviously suggest things that work for things that cook for exactly the same amount of time.
Jack McNulty
It sounds a little bit like a Thermomix.
Geoff Allix
I mean it doesn’t do as much. It would just do soup.
Jack McNulty
Yeah, so I don’t have any of that in my kitchen. So I’m not 100% up on the pluses and minuses and
making soups in all of those. For me, I think there are some keys in making a great tasting soup, which
always comes to mind. And maybe you sacrifice some of that in using some of this technology, for
instance, getting the initial aromatics and vegetables properly sweated. That’s very, very key. And the
reason that’s really important is it starts to build the initial layer of flavor. And so if you’re sweating off
some onions, or carrots, and then you get the spices in there, after the vegetables have softened, the
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flavor of those spices actually goes right into the vegetable, it penetrates it. And that’s what’s creating a
lot of that really intensive flavor that might be in the background. But nonetheless, it’s very important.
Adding oil. Now, I know, some people like to cook without oil, but when you’re working with spices,
sometimes the spice needs an oil in it to help with the the properties of the spices being released in the
food, that oil will transplant that flavor throughout. So it sort of acts as a little bit of a vehicle. But
sometimes also, you want to add a little bit of fat for those fat soluble bits of nutrition that might be in
the vegetables or in the other spices and whatnot. I think cooking the fresh ingredients. Yeah,
sometimes you might want to add them at different points. And so I struggled to see how that works
with a slow cooker, when you’re basically putting everything in there at once. So you would just have
the same kind of texture rather than some different textures, which for some are fine, that’s fine. You
know, and just one of those things you just kind of have to, to weigh. But I think that you can do all of
those things in a pot, initially, create the base, and then if you want, you can actually finish the soup, all
in a slow cooker if you need to go to work or whatever. Or from my perspective, just leave it in the pot
and just you know, it only going to take about another hour at that point anyway. So I don’t know, I think
that that’s one of those decisions that everybody has to kind of make on their own based on their own
unique circumstances and how much time they have in the day and all of those sorts of elements.
Geoff Allix
Okay, and also from Colleen, do you have any ideas of accompaniment to soups other than bread?
Because quite a lot of people are gluten intolerant. And certainly there is an element that if you have a
lot of soup, you could end up eating a lot of bread, because it is the obvious thing to have with soup.
Jack McNulty
Do you mean like a croutons to put on top?
Geoff Allix
I mean, I quite often have soup and I’ll have bread just to dip into the soup. If I’m having a soup, which
is zero carbohydrates then quite often it’ll be just a French baguette, that I’ll be dipping.
Jack McNulty
Yeah, I kind of do that myself. It depends I suppose on the soup, you know, creamy soups, you’d
probably want to do that a little bit more with and something that is going to be chunky, you know some
kind of hearty minestrone or something like that, probably don’t need any sort of bread to go along with
that. If we’re talking about garnishes, or if the question is kind of getting to that point, there’s certainly
lots of ways to to finish a soup from chopped herbs to squeeze a lemon juice or maybe some zest and
you know a little bit of black pepper or ground fresh nutmeg on top of the soup is often quite nice. You
can use plant based cream or yogurt sometimes works very nice. For bean soups, it’s especially nice to
put a little bit of for those that that want to a little bit of extra virgin olive oil on top and then maybe some
nutritional yeast or some kind of faux Parmesan that you’ve come up with, sprinkled on top sometimes
just pesto in a soup is just fabulous. I know in the south of France, they tend to do that a lot. Or just if
it’s a vegetable soup that’s featuring this specific kind of vegetable, use that vegetable as part of the
garnish you know chop up a little bit cook it separately. I make a corn chowder and I like to garnish it
with just pieces of cooked corn kernels, which is fantastic. Sometimes I mix it with some chanterelle
mushrooms also. That kind of thing and there’s lots of different ways but if you want to get away from
bread, yeah, maybe think crackers instead of bread. You know, there’s lots of ways to make them
gluten free of gluten is an issue. But sometimes that’s that’s actually quite nice as well. You can even
crumble them into the soup.
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Geoff Allix
And a question from Vickie Adams Hadge. This could be a challenging one. I used to love a thick and
hearty beast dude, do you have any suggestions on getting that thick and umami stick-to-your-ribs
flavor and texture from an OMS compliance stew?
Jack McNulty
I love that question. I also like the way it’s phrased, you know that stick to your ribs? Yeah, here’s what I
do. So, the first thing you want to do is okay, a stew basically is going to be the same as a soup, right, it
just has a different amount of liquid in it. And that’s going to be a thicker consistency. And so that would
be more of a stew. But if you wanted to make it really that stick to your ribs kind of consistency, you
need to have a very rich broth. And it needs to be something with color. So I make a what I call an
umami broth, which I’ll drop the recipe or a link to the recipe in the show notes. But in essence, what I’m
doing is I’m making a very easy kind of vegetable broth. And then I’ve just packed it with as much
umami flavor as possible. Using dried mushrooms, mushroom powder, I use some soya sauce in there,
I use a little bit of miso in there. And it turns out very, very dark, and actually has quite a meaty flavor to
it. The next question is, is how am I going to thicken that because it’s the consistency of a normal broth,
it’s liquid. Ideally, for a stew, you want to use something that’s like a roux. And you can do it with a
starch. But the reason why you’d want to do it with a roux is a roux is more robust and will hold up
better with longer periods of cooking. Also, if there’s an acid in there a roux will hold better. Or if you’re
reheating it, so you made more than you can eat, which hopefully you did, and the next day you want to
reheat it. A roux will hold up better on that reheating than just a starch based like thickening it with
cornstarch or something of that nature. And then you just cook all of your ingredients and that thickened
sauce. Ironically, I just wrote about this yesterday, I think in my newsletter, I shared a way of making a
mushroom bourguignon. So a bourguignon is typically made with beef. I just did it with mushrooms. I
did exactly this with my umami broth and thickened it with a roux and had some roasted carrots in there
along with the mushrooms, and these little pearl onions that went in there. And it was just It’s exactly as
Vickie described it. If you eat it, it’s thick, and it’s very satisfying. And it’s that kind of stick to your ribs
sort of concept that that maybe she was getting at.
Geoff Allix
And now the final question from Marta Humphries. There’s a lot of information about how beneficial
bone broth is. Now I’ve come across this because I have started fasting like a day a week and one of
the things looking at the information about that is they say you can have bone broth as something to
help you get through fasting because it doesn’t have any carbohydrates and doesn’t have any sugars.
And those are the things you’re trying to avoid. I mean, I’m not doing that. I’m literally just going one day
with water and black coffee and nothing else. But people and some people are doing much longer
fasts, you know, people doing three day, four day, five day fasts. And there are obviously, there must be
some nutrients in bone broth as well. You can make it with various different bones, including fish bones,
but she’s saying How could you make an OMS compliant version when sourcing fish bones can be very
tricky?
Jack McNulty
Yeah. First of all, my first question would be is the animal even important? Is that element really
important? What’s it bringing in terms of any sort of nutrition within the broth for me, I would prefer to do
something more vegetable based, perhaps exactly what I was just referring to with my umami broth.
We’re just going to give you that deep, rich flavor, as well as all of those other wonderful fermented
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elements and the vegetable element that’s in there. So I would find that far more nutritious than
something that is made with with bones. The other part of the bone broth equation that I think that we
often overlook, in this discussion as to whether it’s good or not, is the fact that maybe if you take out the
inflammation element, maybe if you take out there is no fat, so you’re going to be taking that out. And
so you just say, Well, what, why not? Why couldn’t we have it? Well, unfortunately, in this day and age,
most of them is made with beef and beef these days, are going to be fed a quite a significant diet of
antibiotics, whether that’s in their feed or indirectly, that’s a big problem. And that has been shown to go
right into the broth if you’re making it and so I tend to stay away from it for that particular reason, or one
of the reasons why I would, and the same thing that would apply with fish and fish isn’t necessarily,
although farmed fish will have the antibiotics. That will occur in fish feed as well. But the bigger problem
with fish is going to be the microplastics. And that’s also going to come through in a broth and that’s
been shown to be true. So you’re not going to be cooking that out in any way or straining it out in any
way. And I really don’t want to put a lot of plastic in my blood.
Geoff Allix
Okay, right. I think that’s definitely covered quite a lot of things. Personally, I think soups are a great
OMS compliant food. And one thing I would say just personally is you can just try stuff out. Last week I
made a soup just because I’d heard it. It was a tinned soup in a supermarkets it’s a spicy lentil and red
pepper soup. So I thought okay, I’m just basically took some red peppers, put them in the oven with
some tomatoes and actually put the onions chop the onions and put them in the oven as well, just put it
all in the oven and and literally just cooked that up. Added some lentils, added some it said smoky on
there so I added some liquid smoke as well. I think added a bit of chili. Delicious. Absolutely yes. And
it’s just trying stuff out. I think just thinking oh, that sounds nice in there, in soup it kind of works
because it’s all blended together anyway.
Jack McNulty
And I would just add to that Geoff don’t make a big deal out of the broth, the broth helps enormously.
And from my perspective, it can also bring a lot of negative to the soup if you’re using a poor quality
cube or powder or something like that. And so in those instances, just use water. You know, you can
even make them with other other types of liquids. Just let your imagination run free on that. But there’s
nothing wrong with making a soup with just using water and letting the ingredients that are in the soup
speak for themselves. I think that that’s perfectly okay.
Geoff Allix
Okay, thank you very much joining us, Jack.
Jack McNulty
Yeah, you’re welcome. I really appreciate it and look forward to the next one Geoff.
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