The Simplest Soup

I just posted about Kimchee (and a hundred other Korean foods!!!) here https://permies.com/t/2364/kitchen/kimchi#1737974

Then I started thinking, "I left out the Yellow Bean Soup"!!!  A Korean friend taught me how to make thee simplest and most delicious one-item soup on the planet;  she called it "Yellow Bean Soup" because it was made with water and fresh soybean sprouts, which have yellow inner seeds and pre-leaves.  Honestly - the flavor of this stuff is incredible!!  The basic recipe is just the fresh sprouts and water, boil, season and serve.  The soybean sprouts have an amazingly robust flavor when cooked this way, and this soup can be made in a minute!!!  Of course it's best for city dwellers who have constant access to fresh sprouts...but soybean sprouts are only hard to make it you need them all perfectly straight

https://www.koreanbapsang.com/kongnamul-guk-soybean-sprout-soup/

The second runner-up, in my mind, is my homemade cauliflower-based cream of mushroom soup made with dried boletus edulis/porcini mushrooms.  I get mine from individual sellers on eBay in places like Estonia...as long as it is true boletus edulis, you've got some serious flayvah!!  I bought some once from the Pacific Northwest...big beautiful slices, but the entire batch jacked in taste and aroma.  Perhaps these were quick-dried in an electric thingy, instead of the traditional air drying...which probably has something to do with the development of flavor.  

Anyway, that simple soup is: cooked fresh or frozen cauliflower, or other cauli (I stock freeze dried cauli bits in bulk, and often use those)
Soak some dried msuhroom chips/dust in room temp water.  More is better, don't be stingy! If using dried cauli, add together.
Add to some onion cooked in a little butter or olive oil til golden; add water and salt and simmer til mushy.
Throw it all in the blender and adjust seasonings and texture.  This is a soup that receives a little dairy with grace; but doesn't need it.  If you like it extra creamy and a little more fortifying, add some good grass-fed butter and/or a good plop of almond butter before you blend.

And of course, pureed soups are the lifeline, if you're ill: I have had Covid finally and am still getting over it.  I am fond of a daily soup of blenderized broccoli, sweet potato, hot water, and a dollop of almond butter with or without red pepper flakes.

It struck me that there are probably a LOT of one-item, simple soups out there like the Yellow Bean Sprout soup (which I Promise you, you cannot believe until you taste it!!)

Which ones do you know of in this category (simple: NOT Chili, or Hungarian Goulash; and really, really good)  ?

As a result of this pointer, I just put some soybeans in to sprout. :)

Oh, and thinking of simple soups (because soup is good):

Congee.  Y'all, th Chinese eat this for breakfast: the rest of the rice, right in its cooking pot, is shoved onto the back of the stove and left to simmer all night with a LOT of added water.  In the morning, plop up a big bowlfull and top with chopped leftover meats, preserved vegs, a splash of sesame oil, some chopped omelette, scallion, etc - but these are the traditional Chinese flavors.  It has just occurred to me that good old millet would made a great congee!! Millet is so underused here in the West: we generally think of it as Birdseed.  But it was probably the staff of life of the Huns; it is the one grain that is not acid-forming in the body (an important consideration now in our cancer-prone times) and its nutrient level is incredible.  I like how it looks like cornmeal; you can make a stiff buttery millet polenta!!  But this is getting off topic.  The use of yesterday's rice (cook extra) is a good sub for our oatmeal-type porridges, and the toppings can be sweet and/or savory, like bacon ad raisins...

And that reminds me of Japanese breakfast: often miso soup, which is lighter but who says you cannot have toast and/or fruit too?  These are both quick and very healthy.

How many of us on here have a woodstove?  The old timers liked making Perpetual Soup: beans and veggies and any bits of meat and just add to it ongoingly...in cold places and in hungry times it is bliss to come in and ladle up a ready-to-eat bowl.

I think soup is the most basic of human foods; I always wondered about those fleshpots mentioned in the bible...XD

These aren't one ingredient, but they're pretty simple.

First one is what we call paprika beans. Just navy beans cooked with lots of onion, lots of paprika, and lots of olive oil. Salt to taste. The original recipe I saw called for it to be baked until the liquid was gone, but we just make it a soup. I usually use two or three onions per half kilo of dry beans - about equal weights. For that amount of beans, about 4T of paprika.

Second one is carrot lentil soup. Split red lentils are cooked in stock. Carrots are roasted hard in the oven until really soft and caramelised. Then blend it all together, adding more stock as needed to get the consistency you like. You can make it more complicated, and I usually would. I'd roast celery, onions, garlic, mushrooms, etc. along with the carrots and blend those up, too. The carrots are the star, though.

Oh, the paprika beans sounds excellent, Jan!!  Does it have an acidic component like lemon juice  or vinegar?  I actually have a problem with tomatoes, and substitute large amounts of sweet paprika plus an acid, when making "red" veggie soups, chili, etc...I buy huge (like 5 lbs!!) bags of paprika at a time from the local Indian store where it costs about $15.  A really great storage ingredient as it is high in vites and flavor and keeps airtight out of the light for a good long time.  I love paprika!!!

Now that you've mentioned Beans, another simple soup type with a billion variations is the Portuguese (or Spanish) Kale, White Beans and Chorizo soup; you could sub any kind of sausage with some bite to it (andouille!!) and any kind of bean, and almost any green...even leeks...such a great combo!!  Add homemade bread with grass fed butter and there  you are!!

It is cold; I'm going into the kitchen right now to make some!!!

Oh man - How could I have forgotten it, one of the simplest soups out there is pasta e faggiole...usually made with a heck of a robust chicken stock, tubettini, and cannellini beans I think.  I would probably throw in a handful of fresh chopped spinach at serving, and pass the grated parm.  Yum

Haha - I'm always tempted to buy those 5lb bags of paprika, but I stick with the 1lb.

The paprika beans definitely take well to some acid. I like a big spoonful of really tart, homemade coconut cream yoghurt in a bowlful. Some old, sour kimchi would probably be excellent 😉