Soups and Stews Books

This book is a great collection of different soups for different moods. They also all incorporate several similar ingrediants, but stick to a great variety. My only complaint is the lack of calorie, fat, protein and carb counts. That would be helpful.

I've had this cookbook for a while now and have used it to make soups over the past two winters. Many of the recipes within it have become family favorites that we make over and over. The split pea soup with ham and French onion soup gratinee can't be beat! Other favorites include: black bean soup with sausage, avgolemono and lamb and chickpea soup. Overall a great cookbook that will bring many hours of cooking and eating pleasure!

This is not your typical cookbook. With illustrations by Susan Rowden and recipes by Karen Rumbley, Rose-Mary Rumbley's What! No Chili! is the story of Hank, who opens the Big Bite of Texas Cafe, only to be faced with the prospect of having no customers. The problem is that he has left chili (the official cuisine of Texas) off the menu. When Tammy Sue helps Hank whip up a super Texas chili, a Cuisinie Genie named Hot Shot pops out of the pot and gives Hank and Tammy Sue a personal tour of Texas food festivals. Readers will enjoy some great Texas culinary history and be very tempted to try some of the splendid recipes scattered through the story.

If you enjoy Texas trivia, this book gives information about where towns and cities of Texas get their name. Information about the food festivals is entertaining. You never know when you might like to visit and taste some local cuisine. A fun book to read.

I have just about every Williams Sonoma cookbook ever published, including 3 previous books on soups and stews. They have been great and so for me, it was a no-brainer to order this book as well.

It is a good book, but notice the title. It is more about how to make soups generally, than about how to make specific soups. So it is more a book on culinary technique than a classic recipe book.

If you already know the techniques, e.g. making roux', making pureed and cream soups, etc., then this book may be a bit disappointing since it does not have any particularly marvelous recipes as do the other books in the series. But if you're new to soups, this may be a great book.

BTW, I highly recommend the WS Soups 1, Soups 2, and Soups and Stews.

Williams-sonoma mastering series is full of rich and practical tips for all cooking levels. i really enjoyed the layout and the helpful pictures. The explainations and techniques I found to be very helpful while I was preparing the soup dishes.With practice I am sure my soups will turn out like the wonderful pictures shown in the book some day.

Donna Marie Pye has written a lovely book with an interesting collection of recipes. What distinguishes this book from other crock pot books on my shelf are: 1)a few nice photographs of the dishes, 2)most of the dishes can cook for 7 to 9 hours on low if necessary and 3) there are directions for assembly or partial preparation of the night before. This makes it a godsend for those of us with hectic mornings and long hours at work or otherwise away from home. Most of the dishes are low in fat. She gives permission to use lowfat sour cream or evaporated milk when possible. I have had fun with her layered casserole creations such as vegetable pastitsio and Mexican brunch bake. As I write this, behind me on the counter is her ground chicken and squash puree sheperd's pie simmering in my all-clad crock pot.

I love using my crockpot, but have had a difficult time finding good recipes that don't call for a can of creamed soup or other highly processed ingredients. I like this book pretty well for reasonably healthy and varied meals, but I have definitely had mixed results. With a little bit of adaptation, I have been able to make most of what I tried work.

A couple of the most successful ones have been the Cheesy Tortellini Bake, the Rich Vegetable Broth w/Meatballs (though why it is called "vegetable broth" I do not know, because the recipe calls for beef stock!), and the Bargain Beef Stroganoff. They are delicious and I've made them several times each. I had high hopes for the salmon loaf but the only word I can use for that recipe is...vile. The crockpot does not treat canned salmon kindly. It was pale, wet and way too fishy. The "Thai Chicken Thighs" were also seriously underseasoned, but I was able to correct that. Last week I made the "Basic Spaghetti Sauce Italiano" which called for 2 pounds of ground meat to one 28 ounce can of tomatoes. Once I got it assembled, it clearly needed another can of tomatoes - without it, it would have been a sludgy mass of ground meat. Adding another can of tomatoes meant I had to adjust the seasonings. Once I did all that, it was delicious. Today I made "Fia's Pasta Sauce" which has the opposite problem - it calls for four 28 ounce cans of tomatoes AND a cup of red wine. I put three cans of tomatoes in my crockpot and saw that I would not have room for another, and the cup of wine. I just wonder if someone tested these recipes before this book was published?

In short, experienced cooks and people comfortable with substitutions and adaptations can use this book as a jumping-off point for crockpot recipes. A novice cook who needs to follow a recipe exactly and have a good result will want to look elsewhere.

I've been using this cookbook for year's and love it. I haven't found the difficulties other readers indicated. Some recipes I like more than others, but overall it is hands-down my favorite slow cooker cookbook.

I bought it originally for the Chicken and Dumplings, as I was searching for a great recipe. I used a mortar and pestle to grind the rosemary to put in the dumplings and other than that, really didn't modify it.

Our favorites that are repeated often:
Thai Chicken thighs - if I'm out of cilantro, I use coriander and add parsley. I also use only natural peanut butter so it's more nutty.

Chicken and Rosemary Dumplings

Honey Glazed Country Ribs

Potato Leek soup with Stilton

Hot Buttered Rum

Pecan Wild Rice

Cheesy Meatloaf

Plum Good Chicken

I recommend this book to all my friends with slow cookers.

I recently got this book because it seemed like an excellent starting point for my new slow cooker. While the intro gave me some spot-on advice about the art of slow-cooking, I find the recipes seem to have been a bit neglected by the author. I made the Burgundy Beef with Wild Mushrooms, and although it turned out reasonably well, it was only because I altered the ingredient quantities when the stated amounts were obviously wrong. It was painfully apparent that this recipe had NOT been tested prior to publication. I think this book could be useful to the seasoned cook who will be able to see when the recipe is noticeably unbalanced, but it might cause some heartache for the less experienced cook who will surely end up make some very unappetizing dishes through no fault of their own. I'll try a few more recipes, and update this review accordingly.

The recipes sound great, but I tried two and they were both awful. The blend of flavors and consistency were both lacking. Word of advice: try the recipes before using them for guests.

Our library has a "new books" section, and we walked in on a cold day when this book was in front. The cover picture looked just perfect for the weather, so we took out the book. I think we tried one recipe, then bought it on Amazon.

Since then, we've used it quite a bit. The shortribs in Merlot is easy and it's one of my son's favorites. There are certainly some complicated ingredient lists (and we don't make those recipes), but there are lots of simple ones. Sometimes we just look at our current leftovers and can find something to make. Everything has been good, a few are exceptional.

We're pretty basic cooks, and this is one of our better purchases.

I generally do not review cookbooks, but I felt obliged to review Real Stew after seeing so many questions raised about its practicality.

I have owned this book for several years, and both my partner and I cook from it regularly. We give it as a gift to our friends and recommend it often and wholeheartedly. A number of the recipes are on very high rotation with us (the Austrian beer stew comes to mind) and it is never put away for very long in the colder months.

Wright is clearly interested in the history of these recipes as much as he is in the practical side of cooking. That is one of the things that I enjoy so much about it as a cook book. The historical side bars are fascinating and fun, and I really liked the chance to try out some of the ancestors of family favorites. Readers should use their common sense about how far they want to follow him down the road of some of the more historical recipes-- some of them are clearly included for the fun of it. I found that even the less practical entries added texture and humor to the work.

It is true that this isn't the book if you are looking for quick one-pot recipes which you can make in a half an hour and toss into the oven. This is more the kind of book for a Saturday or Sunday afternoon cooking together as a family.

As to the ingredients, it is also true that while some of them may be hard to pick up in the local supermarket, most of them should be able to be found with no real difficulty. You will need access to a good butcher and to a market or organic store which has some of the more out-of-the way vegetables. I live in Amsterdam, very far from the source and target market of most of these recipes, and I have still been able to locate most of the ingredients. (I almost expect to need to substitute with US cookbooks.)

In short, if you are someone who likes to cook and enjoys taking your time and making a bit of a ritual out of it, then this is a book that I would highly recommend.

This book reveals just how precious and convoluted the process of cooking has become for the self-consciously culinarily sophisticated. As a previous reviewer has mentioned, many of its recipes require obscure ingredients or time consuming procedures which when closely examined would appear to have been included for the sake of sheer novelty. Case in point: the author asks the cook in several of the recipes to braid a "rope" from flour and water which is then placed inside the lid of the cooking pot, ostensibly as a seal. After cooking, this "rope" is discarded. Since most well-made casserole dishes or large stewpots include tight-sealing lids, this extra maneuver can only be viewed as the sort of one-upsmanship beloved by upscale cooks with too much time on their hands. Likewise, complex steps such as rendering one's own lard (which the author requires the cook to do in more than one recipe) or tracking down expensive, obscure spices which will in all likelihood be used only once, and then in minute quantity, simply do not justify the time or effort involved. The basic idea of a stew is to create a tasty, satisfying one-pot meal from available ingredients. When it takes weeks to assemble the ingredients and more than a day to prepare the dish, somebody is definitely missing the point.

Another problem with "Real Stews" is its seeming obsession with the exotic over the familiar. All cultures have delicious culinary traditions -- well, at least most of them do -- but to insist that American cooks precisely duplicate the ingredients and cooking conditions necessary for ethnic verisimilitude smacks of snobbery at best and condescension at worst. A little more emphasis on user-friendly and, dare it be said, familiar recipes would have made this book considerably more useful. As it is, for most home cooks, it's likely to gather considerable dust.

This book, like all of Clifford Wright's books, is a pleasure and a treasure. The man is a genius. Most of the recipes are extremely easy and extremely delicious, like the Hungarian Smoked Sausage and Prune Stew, which has a total of 4 ingredients, including water (a garnish/enrichment adds 2 more). Wright makes the recipes easy by giving authentic ingredients but including substitutes that you can find in any market. For example, he says to use a prosciutto bone or a ham bone; goat milk or cow milk plus cream, etc. Many of the stews have only 3 or 4 ingredients after water and salt and pepper; many include ingredients that are just throw-ins that require no preparation, like olives, capers, tomato paste, nuts, or raisins. The more adventurous cook can try recipes that include things like preserved lemons--Wright tells you how to make them. He also makes the book idiot-proof with the organization: "Stews With Beef," "Stews With Pork," "Stews With Vegetables"--you get the idea. If you don't like some of the ingredients, you can substitute what you do like. You can't go wrong with Wright.

I have owned this book for about a year now, and it's fantastic. The recipes are not instant, but if you have the time and inclination to make wonderful, authentic tasting (vegetarian and non-vegetarian) food, buy this book. My particular favorites are the chicken and sweet potato curry, spinach bouillibaise, and the full-length traditional bouillabaise. However, I have never made a recipe from this book that I didn't like. After buying loads of seasonal vegetables at the farmer's market - this book is one of my first stops in finding ways to use the vegetables. I'm buying a copy today for my brother; I'm sure he'll love it. I'm also looking forward to using Mr. Wright's Meditaranean cookbook which I'm buying.

I have always loved Middle Eastern meals and have developed a fondness Moroccan food and all it's specialized cookware in particular. And cooking it and collecting the cookbooks. I am in the process of collecting all cookbooks from this author for the simple reason that you often hear "You eat with you eyes also." "Ghille," of Turkish descent understands this and her cookbook photos with the help of a series of professional photographers not only help you see your "goal" in a dish that may be brand new to you but they inspire you to try this dish as many of these photos will make you salivate with anticipation. And there is a picture for each dish. Visuals are an important feature I consider when determining which cookbook to purchase. Cooking starts long before you make a list of ingredients to purchase. Ghille instills a visual "crave" anticipation before the delightful aromas and tastes of the food are experienced. I like "prolonged anticipation" when I cook. Her cookbooks continue to get better.

We've been picking out a tagine or two to prepare each week... and so far all have been absolutely delicious! Because some of the items must cook slowly to enhance the flavors, I imagine it would be difficult to overcook anything-- yay for me! There is a middle eastern market near my house where I have been able to get some of the unique spices and ingredients. I have also found there are plenty of spice retailers online if you don't have access to such a market near you. The book admits there are some not-so-traditional tagines included, like the creamy shellfish tagine. Totally delicious, however. There was one recipe with saffron in the title, but saffron could not be found listed ANYWHERE in the recipe. I found that perplexing. Still, I rate this book 4-stars as it has brought new culinary delights to our table and tummies!

This book promises more than it delivers. It's colourful, interesting etc but the recipes can easily be downloaded from the web for free from a variety of sources. A waste of money.

I can't attest to the quality of all the recipes but I can say there should be a lot more of them!

I tried one recipe and it turned out great...but I just wish there was more to the book.

Oh well.

If you own a tagine, you need this book. If you don't own one, you are missing out. They are a great way to cook and the food is simply beautiful. If you love Mococcan food then this recipe book is a must have.

I did not care for this book at all. The recipes call for too much fat (butter, heavy cream, sour cream, cheese, etc.) I would've liked to see calorie count because these soups look way too fattening. A major dissapointment.

If you're into soup, check out Feast of Soup.

Eels, honeycomb tripe, veal knuckles, pig's feet, gooseberries, oxtail, quahogs and lamb neck - just some of the many oddd ingredients in this book. I was looking for something to make for a simple dinner. This is definitely not it! I was very disappointed. The book was printed in 1982 and there has been no update of any kind.

Need we be surprised? Once again Heriteau delivers an exceptionally tasty assortment from her kitchen to ours...and just in time for me to add it to my Christmas-giving list. She is truly blessed, as are we, in turn!

I learned to make soups using this book when it was first released. Instructions were easy to follow, and the results was dependable and delicious! I misplaced the book a few years ago so am looking forward to turning to these recipes once again!

All cookbooks before about 1940 or so had a section in them entitled "invalid cooking". This little book helps us now. We generally do not have this information. This is a great place to start. It covers a wide variety of suggestions for food that can used for ailments that everyone encounters ... upset stomach, sneezes, sniffles, and "out of sorts days". I have found it to be a wonderful resource for my classes that I teach.
Charli Vogt, RN,MN, MPH herbalist, health teacher, radio show host
[...]

I bought this book used and have used it many times for myself and my friends. I have enjoyed it so much I am buying several more copies for gifts. A very good homopathic cure for almost everything.

Pat Willard brews together family and tradition like few writers today. Just reading her stories is a tonic. In fact I tried some of the recipes and they worked. However, I may have had a heavy hand in the liquor section a bit. A good read. This is the second Pat Willard book I enjoyed, and look forward to the next. Also, I heard the interview on NPR, and Pat sounds like an enjoyable person. I'll pass on the vinegar and cayenne, though.

"A Soothing Broth" is exactly that!! Pat Willard's gem of a book is thoroughly researched & splendidly written. Wrought with witticisms & wise cracks, Willard's tone brings as much comfort as the numerous concoctions she describes & it is a joy to have so much healing humor added to the mix as in the eel vs. vipers debate & the pig Miss Glover knew personally. The historical recipes are utterly compelling & crammed with great stuff including the truly useful & the just plain fascinating like the cure for nymphomania! (Ah, the good ol' days when cocaine & marijuana weren't yet controlled substances...) The wonderful introductions to each section are mini memoirs with an array of colorful characters & their various approaches to attaining and/or maintaining good health like Willard's maternal grandmother's seaweed soup & Miss Glover's kidney-cleansing dandelions. Structured around a firm foundation of an amazing & practical collection of tonics, treatments & cures, "A Soothing Broth" is imbued with the spirit of Florence Nightingale whose important contributions to the health-care field continue to influence modern-day medicine. This book is a real pleasure to peruse with its impressively wide range of info for whatever ails you.

My wife the cook swears by this book, and though I'm not competent myself to answer questions about cooking, being all thumbs, I do teach history, and I find this book fascinating on historical grounds. Its account of the history of nursing, interwoven with recipes, is judicious, lively, insightful, and an excellent read.

Even marginal cooks can enjoy this cook book. There are so many hearty, wholesome soups as well as some soups for a lighter diet. There are tips on buying and picking fresh, organic ingredients. The instructions are simple and easy to follow. It has some lovely personal stories between recipes. It really is a wonderful book.

"There is something so comforting about soup. It touches something deeply rooted in our lives." p. 5 This book is a journey around the work and through the year.

The soups are divided into church seasons: Advent, Christmas, Lent, and Easter. It is filled with interesting stories and antidotes from Curry's travels and from Jesuit history and lore.

The recipes are great and the tales make them nourishing for the soul as well as the body. With soups from around the world and tales of travels, life loss and joy, the book will be a pleasure to read. Savor the words of wisdom as you enjoy the soups.

Rick Curry entered the Society of Jesus in 1961. In the last forty years he has been an actor, baker, teacher and author. He founded the National Theatre Workshop of the Handicapped, a nonprofit acting school for persons with disabilities. With both a asters and doctorate in arts he has created the first residential center for arts for persons with disabilities.

This works better as a "memoir of soup making" rather than a book of soup recipes. Mr. Curry has an engaging and stimulating writing style and many of the stories that surround the recipes are quite delightful. The recipes themselves leave a lot to be desired. A lot of the ingredients I've never heard of and a lot of the soups are designed to be made by someone with unlimited time and patience available-not the norm in the typical American household. Some of these concoctions seem to have been designed to be exotic merely for the sake of being exotic, not because they provide superior soups. Of those recipes that seemed doable on our schedule with what we normally have at hand for our routine cooking, all were fine but none exceptional or particularly noteworthy.

If offbeat soup making is your life, then this might be a good choice. For most people, I'd say look for it on a friend/acquaintance's bookshelf and read it for the stories.

If you're looking for the ultimate gift cookbook, I can't think of a better choice than The Secrets of Jesuit Soupmaking. This book is beautifully written, and engages the reader's heart and soul unlike any other cookbook I've ever encountered. The recipes are SUPERB, and there is a year's worth of variety in this compact volume.

I've loaned The Secrets of Jesuit Soupmaking more times than I can count, and everyone who's borrowed it ended up buying their own copy. That's the highest praise I can lend this wonderful book!

I was very disappointed at the quality of the recipes in this book. One recipe actually used boullion cubes for the stock!! From the tilte of the book I would think that each of these soups would be a "labor of love". None are very inspiring. I will probably never open this book again. I suggest the Willams Sonoma "Soup" highly over this.

I just finished a bowl of Charlie Trotter's "Lentil & Bacon" soup from the new "Soup's On" cookbook. I found the recipe easy to follow, quick to prepare and delicious to eat. This has become my new favorite cookbook. Living in the cold and snowy Northeast corridor, this book is the one I will rely on when I want something nourishing and comforting on a cold evening. I look forward to trying all of the recipes in this wonderful book.

I love this cookbook and Next Course is an amazing program in the Bay Area. The book helped me get over my fear of making chicken stock and now I bring my friends soup at every opportunity. Thanks!

To me, cooking often involves reheating dinners from the prepared foods section at Whole Foods. I can make a stellar tortellini Alfredo, but that's just about it. I have to say, though, that I have made great friends with this book during the cold, rainy season.... when all I want to do is whip up something easy, warm and satisfying, Soup's On is my go-to. So far, I have found the recipes to be approachable and easy to follow, and each one is really terrific. Alice Waters' carrot soup is wonderful--a friend of mine even likes to puree it for her baby daughter. Georgeanne Brennan's mache and parmesan is light and lovely as a starter, and it is a total snap to make. I've also long been a fan of albondigas, and Traci Des Jardin's recipe is terrific. I bought half a dozen of these books to give as Christmas gifts... I've only heard rave reviews!

This book has been a lifesaver this winter! The recipes are clear and easy-to-follow, but most of all they yield the most scrumptious soups! I've even ventured away from the store-bought stocks to make my own from scratch. Want to know a secret? The recipes are so simple that I pretend I have my own show on the Food Network and that I'm teaching everyone out there in TVLand how to make "my" famous soups. Last week I brought a pot of the albondigas soup to a pot luck last week and, well, I have to admit that the reviews were so wonderful that I fibbed and told them I made it up, with a little help from my 80 year old Mexican grandmother. Well, I ain't from that part of the world, and the recipe? It's actually Traci Des Jardin's. But that's our little secret...

I was excited about this cookbook since I make soup once a week. However, of the three recipes I've tried, two had faulty instructions. Apparently the recipes were compiled as a benefit for a not-for-profit, and not tested. For example, the porcini and chicken chowder directs you to soak the porcini mushrooms and "set aside", and then they are never put into the soup. I tried to contact the publisher to get the complete, correct recipe, and was told that my request would be forwarded to the team that worked on the book, but a month later I still don't have the correct recipe. Another recipe directed you to start a step 15 minutes before the recipe was to be done, but then required 30 minutes of cooking. So was the idea to have the stew overcooked by 15 minutes? One recipe of the three I tried was complete and correct, and turned out fine. I won't be trying any more!