My Favorite Easy Trick for Transforming Boring Soups

While soup season should should be winding down, frost is still threatening parts of the U.S. Just when I should be cracking my knuckles to make burger patties, the wind chill has me hauling out the Dutch oven to make soup. Again.

If your palate is tired of the same old soup recipes, I understand—lots of salt and umami can get boring. That's why you need my trick for bringing fresh interest to tired flavors (while also prepping your palate for spring): Simply brighten them with a dose of acidity. 

American-style soups tend to be heavily focused on the savory, salty end of the flavor spectrum—stews, chilis, chicken noodle variations, gumbos, chowders, and creamy soups. We’re all sleeping on the an entire category: sour soups. Consider these iconic dishes: Thai tom yum, Chinese suan la tang (also called hot and sour soup), German sauerkrautsuppe, Italian giambotta, and Greek avgolemono soup. And you can brighten up any soup using a few ingredients you probably have on hand.

How to make sour soups at home

Adding a sour element to your soup doesn’t mean replacing the broth with a bottle of vinegar. Rather, it’s about adding balance and complementing the salty, sweet, or savory components. There are a few ways to bring acidity into your soups. The dishes I mentioned above use lime juice, vinegar, fermentation, crushed tomatoes, and lemon juice to develop their signature tart flavors. All of those things are easily accessible at your local supermarket, if not in your kitchen already.

If you’re new to sour soups, try incorporating one of those elements above to start experimenting with the flavor. You could certainly use a specific recipe for a particular sour soup (I've included one below), but if you're not, just start with a brothy soup that you already like, cut a wedge of lemon, and squeeze it into the soup. If you don’t have a lemon available, try a teaspoon of vinegar. Taste the soup, and take it from there. 

If you overdo the juice or vinegar on your first try, don't throw the dish out—you can add a little more salt and then eat the soup alongside some cooked rice to mellow out the sting.

A few fresh flavor combinations to try

Personally, I think lemon juice goes particularly well with most any soup that uses chicken broth or a creamy neutral broth. A couple spoonfuls of crushed tomatoes work well added to any soup that has beef, pork, or sausage. Adding sauerkraut or kimchi can be a nice touch for soups with lots of potatoes or beans. 

A couple years ago, my fiancé and I became obsessed with avgolemono soup. I'm not sure what spurred this (neither of us is Greek), but it has become our go-to recipe whenever our typical lineup of soups grows mundane. (If you really want your tastebuds to buzz, double the amount of lemon juice.) 

Credit: Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Avgolemono Soup Recipe

Ingredients:

• 1 tablespoon olive oil

• ¼ cup finely sliced carrot

• ½ cup finely chopped celery

• 3 scallions finely sliced

• 2 tablespoons finely diced yellow onion

• 2 cloves garlic, minced

• ¼ teaspoon salt

• 3 ½ cups chicken or vegetable broth

• 1 bay leaf

• ½ cup jasmine rice (or orzo if you like)

• 1 cup cooked and shredded chicken

• Juice of one lemon (about a ¼ cup)

• 1 egg

• Parsley (optional for a garnish)

1. In a medium pot, heat the olive oil over medium-low heat to warm it up. Add the carrots, celery, scallion, onion, garlic, and salt. Stir often to coat the veggies in the oil. 

2. Once the veggies begin to sweat and become translucent, after about two or three minutes, add the broth, and bay leaf. Bump up the heat to medium and bring the broth up to a boil. 

3. Stir in the rice (or orzo) and lower the heat back down to a simmer. Let the carbs simmer and cook for about eight to 15 minutes, depending on if you’re using orzo or rice. 

4. Stir in the shredded chicken.

5. Crack the egg into a medium-sized bowl. Add the lemon juice and whisk them together thoroughly. Using a ladle, temper the eggs by whisking the hot chicken broth into the egg mixture. Drizzle two or three ladle-fuls of broth into the egg mixture as you rapidly whisk. You’ll see the egg mixture become an opaque yellow color. This is great.

6. Take the pot of soup off the hot burner and stir the tempered lemon-egg mixture into the pot of soup. The broth will become creamy and light. Serve topped with torn parsley if desired. 

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