Soups Unit Reflection

Soups are so interesting because there are so many different kind and verities of flavors. For my group’s first soup we selected a chicken-tortilla soup. This was a new experience for me because I have never made a Mexican soup before. The first step was to make the stock. Stock’s can be vegetable based or meat based but for our soup we made a chicken stock. We made the mirepoix and the bouquet garni which was wrapped in cheesecloth. The bouquet garni consisted of herbs and vegetables. This allowed the liquid to move through it to add flavor to the stock. The next class was used to prepare our misenplace. This is where my group had some trouble. Our recipe had not been printed out the night before and we were not prepared. By the time we got into the kitchen we had missed instruction of where ingredients were kept so we struggled finding what we needed. This caused us to lose even more time and when the bell rang we had not finished gathering and cutting. When we began our soup, however, we were more prepared. We knew what we were doing and worked together to get it done. We had good teamwork so it the process went much quicker. We pureed vegetables along with corn tortillas in a food processer. This is a technique to have a smooth pulp. The nourishing element in our soup was the chicken. In the end we had left over soup because we forgot to convert the recipe for four servings. That is something to remember to do for next time. To top off the soup we added a garnish of basil and the deep-fried tortilla strips. Our other soup was a potato-leek soup. The vegetables were pureed in the soup also. For this soup I thought it tasted a little strong and in the future I would add fewer scallions. My group was generally good in terms of sanitation and safety. We mostly divided up the cleaning but sometimes one person did more than another. Over all I thought the results were positive and in the future the main thing I would work to improve is the preparation. -Kate L