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Hey, what's up guys, welcome back to Basics with Babish
I'm doing a Basics this week instead of a Binging because I'm very, very sick
and we shoot Basics episodes in advance, 'cause we're smart like that.
Anyway, this week we're taking a look at blender soups.
Starting with what I like to call elote soup.
First we gotta husk four ears of corn. An easy way to get the silk off the corn is with a toothbrush.
Which will, of course, become your designated corn-silking toothbrush. Never leave home without it.
Then we're gonna slice all the kernels off the cobs.
And finely dice half a small, yellow onion
And then we are headed over to the stove-top to parcook some of our ingredients
First, we're gonna saute our onion in a couple tablespoons of butter, until soft
Add most of our corn kernels, reserving some for sauteing in brown butter
Add about a cup of chicken stock, bring to a simmer
Season with little shakes each of: paprika, cumin, and cayenne pepper
And then simmer 15-20 minutes or until the corn is nice and soft.
In the meantime, in a smaller saucepan, we're gonna brown up some butter.
Once the milk solids in your six tablespoons of butter begin to separate and brown, add your reserved corn kernels and saute
Once all of our corn is sufficiently corned, it's time to head back over to our blender
where we are sending our corn and chicken stock mixture
Our brown butter corn is being placed to the side as it will be one of our many toppings
And then, as you might have guessed from the name of this episode, we're gonna blend this corn
Adding maybe a half a cup of cream, a tablespoon or two of sugar (especially if you're buying your corn in the off-season and it's not very sweet)
And seasoning to taste with white pepper and kosher salt
To taste is very important here,
you might need more cream, you might need more salt, more sugar, just keep adding little bits as necessary,
blending and tasting and repeating until it's perfect.
Now, for our toppings, we're gonna fry up some bacon to crispy completion
Thinly slice some jalapeno peppers
and get those into some prep bowls
along with our bacon, brown butter corn, and some cotija cheese
To finish, let's start by pouring our velvety corn soup into our bowl
and topping with each of our aforementioned accoutrement
each of which are gonna bring their own flavors and textures to the party
And make no mistake, this is as close as soup gets to a party
But what about the opposite end of the soup spectrum?
The pure comfort soup
the kind of soup that I dearly wish I had some of right now:
a creamy tomato soup with grilled cheese
We're starting off by finely mincing a shallot and one clove of garlic
which we're gonna saute in about two tablespoons of unsalted butter
start with the shallot and saute until soft, about 3 minutes
add the garlic and saute until fragrant, about 60 seconds
Add one tablespoon of tomato paste and saute for maybe another 30 seconds, until it's well incorporated
Then we're gonna add a little shake of oregano and a can of San Marzano tomatoes
We're just gonna break up those tomatoes a little bit with a wooden spoon
and bring the whole affair to a simmer,
adding a solid cup of water to make sure the tomatoes don't dry out
and a solid teaspoon of molasses to add a little sweetness
We're then gonna let this guy simmer for at least 30 minutes,
I would even go an hour to let those flavors really, really get to know each other
Once they're all well-acquainted, we're going to introduce them to our high-powered blender
and employ a brilliant trick, courtesy of J. Kenji Lopez-Alt over at the food lab,
which is to add one slice of torn, crust-less white bread to the soup, before blending,
which will, in turn, make it creamy
adding olive oil to the blender while it's running will also create an emulsion and help make the soup rich and creamy
This is a great way to make a cream-like soup if you wanna stay vegan or avoid dairy
I'm also gonna add a little bit of sugar and, of course, some kosher salt
blending and re-seasoning as necessary, until my desired texture, and consistency, and flavors are achieved
And now, onto the most important part of tomato soup: the grilled cheese
We've got a pretty standard grilled cheese situation going on here
I'm using mayonnaise on the bread instead of butter to get a really deep brown crust
Foaming butter in the pan, yellow American cheese betwixt the bread
But I've got a fun idea for how to deploy this grilled cheese in our soup situation
First, I'm just gonna eat the crust while the cameras are not running,
wait wai- no, no, don't record this, don't record this
And then I'm going to cut the crust-less grilled cheese into grilled cheese croutons
and I know I just made efforts to make this soup dairy free,
but if you're not trying to stay dairy-free,
a nice swirl of heavy cream or cream fraiche is lovely on top of this soup,
along with our grilled cheese croutons
and there you have it, the ultimate creamy tomato soup and grilled cheese
I really hope you guys try this one for yourselves
I'm very sorry for the slow upload week, but I am on the mend,
and we'll be back to a regular schedule shortly
now, if you'll excuse me, I'm going back to bed
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