Today's clear soup recipe is a common dish in central European, Austrian and German, cuisine.
To make the clear broth soup from scratch is super easy. You can add dumplings and noodles to enrich your dining experience.
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What is a Clear Soup?
This particular soup is prepared with whole fresh root vegetables and spices. The soup seasoning is subtle and for someone who's used to spicy food, it might taste a bit plain.
The Clear Soup, Klare Suppe in German, is also called a consommé in German.
Which is a bit miss leading, as Consommé usually involves egg whites to get rid of impurities. It comes from French cuisine.
It is strained through a fine sieve or a plain cotton muslin cloth to get rid of impurities and to clear it completely. The result is a flavorful clear soup.
Ingredients
For a vegetable-based clear soup, you will need a set of vegetables.
The soup requires flavor giving root vegetables. This can be a combination of carrots, celery roots, parsley roots, onions, and leeks.
Some root vegetable root varieties are not suitable for this because they don't give the right flavor to the dish. This includes beets, radish, potatoes, turnip, and fennel.
Spices and fresh Herbs
The spices used in the clear soup recipe have been essentially picked in such a way that they all have a certain purpose for our health.
- Bay Leaf: Treats a cold well and helps you to digest
- Juniper Berry: Anti-bacterial, increases appetite and improves digestion as well
- Nutmeg: Increases immune system function, reliefs pain and detoxifies
- Black Pepper: Anti-bacterial, respiratory relief and supports your digestion
- Parsley: Boost the immune system and aids digestion
You can also add allspice, lovage, and celery seeds to your soup to season it further.
Process Overview
Here is an overview of how to make this clear broth soup from scratch with fresh ingredients.
Step 1
Prep and cut vegetables.
Heat up a large soup pot and sauté vegetables.
Step 2
Pour water to vegetables and season with spices.
Cook the soup. The soup needs to be reduced and infuse with the ingredients.
Step 3
Strain soup when ready. You can use the vegetables for something else like a mash.
Serve up hot.
📖 Recipe
Clear Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 1 pound Root Vegetables *see Notes and Post
- 1 Onion
- 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
- ½ gallon Water
- 1 large Bay Leaf or 2 small
- a few Parsley Fresh
- ¼ Teaspoon Nutmeg
- 7 Juniper Berries
- 10 Black Peppercorn Whole
- Lovage, Allspice or Celery Seeds optional
- Salt to taste
Instructions
- Rinse your root vegetables to get rid of impurities. Cut them into chunks and slice onion.
- Heat up a large soup pot with the oil and saute onion slices.
- Stir in the vegetables and saute for a short time to bring out the flavors.
- Add the water and season with bay leaves, nutmeg, black peppercorn, and juniper berries. You can also season with lovage, celery seeds, and allspice seeds if you have any.
- Bring the soup to a boil, and give it a quick stir. Keep on a steady medium heat setting.
- Cook and reduce soup, it will infuse all the more over time. This can take 60-80 mins.
- Season with salt when it's done cooking.
- Strain soup with a fine sieve or cheesecloth. We use the veggies in another dish (vegetable mash, casserole dish,...)
- Bring the strained soup back to the heat. Keep it hot until serving time.
- Serve as is or with dumplings or noodles (see post for ideas).
Notes
- Root vegetables can be a combination of fresh carrots, celery root, parsley root and leeks
- You can also add a few leaves of lovage (fresh, frozen or dried), 1 teaspoon of celery seeds or a 3-5 allspice seeds.
- See post for ideas on how to use this broth
Nutrition
Serving
A clear broth soup is served in German and Austrian homes and inns (called Gasthaus), either plain as is or with dumplings and noodles.
It's a common all-year-round soup, served on Mondays because Monday is a meatless Monday and people call it a Mehlspeißen (flour dishes) day.
The addition of dumplings or savory pancakes, cut in strips, is called a Suppeneinlage. Just in case if you ever venture to taste local foods in Vienna or Salzburg.
In our house, the clear soup made its appearance always on Sunday nights, and it would usually be served with Wiener sausages cut in.
The clear soup is meant to give the body warmth from within on cold days. It's a concentrated broth.
The soup gives your body much-needed strength after a hard-working day. When served as a plain starter, the clear soup is considered a stomach tease. So to say it's preparing your hungry stomach for the main meal to come.
The soup is also traditionally served up after a funeral with a sausage and a bread roll.
Uses
- Add Grießknödel - semolina dumplings
- Add Schöberl with Herbs - biscuit dumplings with herbs
- Add Semmelnödel - classic bread dumplings
- Add Pressknödel - flattened cheese dumplings
- Add Fritatten - savory pancake cut into strips
- With egg noodles
- As a broth to make other soups such as a green turnip soup
- Add Tibetan Momo dumplings or Chinese dumplings to it
- add sausage as in Wiener sausage
- add noodles as in ABC noodles or Pastina
Storing & Leftovers
Keep leftovers in an airtight container in your fridge. It keeps well for days.
You can freeze the soup in batches, too. To reheat, just place in a pot over the stove and heat until it has melted, and it's hot, ready to be served.
The vegetable leftovers, separated from the broth, can be used in another dish.
You can turn the veggies into a mash or add it to a casserole dish or make a sauce of it. Just make sure to pick out the whole spices from your vegetables.
