Pasta Water Takes Your Soup To The Next Level

For fans of French onion and admirers of minestrone, soup season is the best time of the year. Packed with potatoes and cream, or swimming with fresh veggies and pools of noodles, soups, stews, chowders, and chilis are snow day staples and sick dinner essentials. You can upgrade unsatisfying soup with creative toppings like crispy fried shallots and seasoned croutons, add a little heat with a dash of the right hot sauce, or make canned soups look and taste restaurant-ready with leftover greens. You can even pull out a bag of smoky pork rinds to add crispy texture to a boring stew. 

However, if you need to transform the consistency, it's easy to boost your soup with a little bit of a liquid you might be overlooking. Don't dump your pasta water down the drain. The starchy fluid is the perfect ingredient to thicken soups and stews. If you're brewing a bowl of chicken noodle or Tuscan tortellini soup, let that pasta water work double duty. 

Boost your soups

For thicker flavorful soup, pour in a little pasta water. Particularly if you're already making a pasta-forward dish like Italian wedding, minestrone, chicken noodle, or orzo soup, take advantage of the savory, thick liquid. You can even cook the pasta in the soup itself, to give broth a boost. Laden with salt and starch, leftover pasta water works as a wonderful thickening agent for stews and sauces. To avoid food waste, and to flavor food in a pinch, keep the multi-purpose ingredient stored in your fridge

If you're short on pasta water, there are plenty of other ways to add weight and richness to your soups or stews. A simple slice of bread added to your pot can thicken soup in a snap; so can blended beans or instant mashed potatoes. Of course, you can also thicken soup with a creamy substance like cream, yogurt, or coconut milk, and there's always the classic cornstarch slurry — a mixture of cornstarch and water that can thicken soups, stews, pasta sauces, and gravy with just two ingredients. 

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