The Crucial Step You Can't Skip With Vegetables When Making Soup

When the days grow shorter and the leaves turn crisp, veggie lovers put away the salad tongs and pull out the soup pot. Instead of getting nourishment from refreshing, flavor-packed spoon salads, it's time to dive tastebuds into endless bowls of velvety roasted butternut squash soup and hearty bean ones. Homemade versions of these recipes are especially enticing, as they provide the opportunity to linger in the kitchen's warmth as you add aromatic herbs to roasted proteins and savory broth.

However, there's one flavor-building technique many of us have been skipping — showing your soup veggies some love with a good saute. Sure, this takes a little extra time, but rushing the process is one of many common mistakes when cooking homemade soup. Sauteing your mirepoix (a classic soup base of celery, carrots, and onions), garlic, and even mushrooms not only caramelizes them, but helps release more flavor. Comparatively, boiling your veggies merely softens them, releasing the barest traces of flavor.

The reason for this flavor disparity between cooking methods is something called the Maillard reaction. This complex chemical reaction is what happens when food becomes crisp and brown — it's essentially the reason we love dark, savory barbecued burnt ends and even toasted bread. Sauteing aromatics in a little oil gives them this crispness, allowing you to pack all of that flavor into your soup. Sweating onions (and even spicy peppers) also develops their sugars, mellowing their inherent astringency and bringing out their peppery undertones for a deliciously complex outcome.

Since the difference between a merely good soup and a craveable one is sauteed veggies, it's important to execute this technique properly. The first step to this is knowing which of your soup ingredients can withstand being heated twice without becoming unpleasantly mushy. As mentioned, mirepoix is a great candidate for this, since carrots, celery, and onions are all fairly crisp, hard vegetables. Other options include broccoli, cauliflower, and even cubes of winter squash, like butternut or acorn.

Once you've picked which veggies to saute, chop them into fairly uniform pieces to ensure they all cook at the same rate. Cutting them into larger pieces (about the size of a nickel) helps ensure your veggies develop a good flavor in the pan without becoming tender too quickly. Smaller pieces may cook through and become mushy after simmering in your soup. It's also important that your pan is large enough to hold a single layer of chopped veggies, as crowding could steam your veggies instead of browning them.

Using the right amount of oil when sauteing is also very important. You only need a little bit — about enough to just coat the bottom of your pan. This helps your veggies make contact with the cooking surface without sticking, which helps them develop that tasty dark crust. After everything is sauteed to savory perfection, your veggies are ready to add a punch of flavor to hearty chili, creamy bisque, or savory chicken stew.