A Week of "Safer At Home" Soups

A well-stocked pantry full of canned beans, tomatoes, pasta and broth is perfect for making soup. Long-lived fresh produce like potatoes, onions, carrots, parsnips, kale, garlic, rutabaga and squash are soup staples, too! Here Kowalski's Culinary Director Rachael Perron offers seven suggestions for comforting bowls that are easily made with ingredients you probably have on hand, with some of her best tips for making do if you're missing one or two.

Tasty Tip:

In the event you can't finish the whole batch or want to make extra, all of these soups freeze very well. For safest results, cool soup to room temperature before dividing leftovers into 1- to 3-serving portions that will freeze quickly and evenly.

General Notes for Soup Swaps

While our suggested recipes are written for optimum results, these substitutions won't impact your final product enough to notice:

• Use milk, cream and half-and-half interchangeably.
• Short on fresh herbs? Just use half as much of the dried variety. Swap rosemary and thyme, if needed. Parsley fills in fine for almost any herb, including basil and cilantro.
• Low-sodium and regular stocks swap well. Just adjust the seasonings by hand. You can also use vegetable and chicken broths or stocks for one another with similar results (see our recipe for homemade Chicken Stock).
• Beans are quite interchangeable. Sub northern, cannellini and navy beans for one another. Light and dark kidneys and chili beans also work well in one another’s place.
• Kowalski's Soup Mix (from the Produce Department) is a prepared produce item consisting of chopped onion, carrot, celery and parsnips. If you don't have it you can use any combination of these vegetables that you have on hand as the aromatic base of a soup. If you're a garlic lover, a little of that is always a nice addition to most soups. On that note, jarred garlic or garlic paste/purée is a perfectly acceptable stand-in for fresh garlic.