Nothing beats a savory, simmering soup on a cold, wet day. Set up this make-ahead soup buffet with lots of ladles, napkins, spoons, and small, sturdy plates. Baskets of bread or mugs filled with breadsticks make wonderful centerpieces and are a nice chewy or crunchy accompaniment.
If you offer your guests large mugs, they can easily handle them sitting around your living room. The mug handles will keep their hands cool, and some sturdy spoons make dining a breeze. Big napkins are a mustand think about putting out some trays that your guests can place on coffee tables and side tables. Use crock-pots to keep the soups steaming hot—just set the slow-cookers on warm and stir them from time to time.
A fun twist is to offer lots of garnishes, like cheese popcorn,croutons, goldfish crackers, chopped fresh herbs, and grated cheese. Sour cream, pesto, and salsas make great toppings, too. Add delicious bread, a fresh, crisp salad, and an impressive dessert and you have themakings for a fun and relaxing soup buffet.
Feel free to mix and match theserecipes for an easy soup buffet party.
Use cereal-sized bowls, and don't worry about the place settings looking lame. Put the bowls on a larger plate, with a big cloth napkin folded underneath it to cozy things up. Serve the soup from a pretty pot. Even if you don't own a soup tureen, maybe you have a pretty ceramic pot that will look nice on the table.
A general rule of thumb is that soup can be stored in the refrigerator for about three days, but you should always taste your dish before deciding to reheat. A clear, vegetable-based soup with some acidity, such as tomatoes, may last longer. Chicken soup usually lasts three to five days.
Put a ladle or big spoon in each soup so people don't cross-contaminate. Set out a big stack of bowls. Use disposable bowls if you don't have 20 bowls (I certainly don't have 20 bowls!) —just make sure the disposable bowls are strong enough to hold hot soup.
Most soups can be made in advance, and even frozen. If you are making a soup which contains previously cooked meat, such as pea and ham soup or chicken noodle soup, then it is best to make the soup base and cool and chill it before adding the shreds of meat.
Hot foods should be held at 140°F or warmer. On the buffet table, keep hot foods hot with chafing dishes, slow cookers and warming trays. Cold foods should be held at 40°F or colder. Keep foods cold by nesting dishes in bowls of ice.
"Soups and stews really need to simmer for long periods to allow the ingredients to meld together. Taking that a step further, most soups and stews are better if you prepare them the day before serving.
The food danger zone is that place between 40 and 140 °F where pathogens grow most quickly. It can take a long time to get through the danger zone when cooling a large batch of chili, soup or stew. The soup must cool from 140 to 70 °F in 2 hours and from 70 to 40 °F in no more than 4 hours.
A good rule of thumb is to have each guest make one quart of soup per each attendee. For example, if six people total attend, each guest (including you) should make six quarts of soup—one to sample the night of the party, and five quarts to give away (you won't go home with a quart of your own soup).
When serving soup, place the soup plates or bowls on an underplate. When the soup is finished or the spoon is laid down, the spoon is left in the soup plate, not on the dish underneath. If the soup is served in a cup, the spoon is left on the saucer.
That varies by what's inside the slow cooker and also by the appliance's setting and model, the experts say. Most recipes for all-day cooking call for 6 to 8 hours on low. Quality- (and safety-) wise, another 1 to 2 hours in 'keep warm' mode won't mess things up.
Reason being that as soup is left to sit overnight in the fridge, all of the flavors of individual ingredients mingle & mix & marry themselves together into one cohesive flavor profile making for some pretty tasty eating the following day.
You can cut broccoli, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, cabbage, and kale three or four days ahead of time; celery and mushrooms can be cut two or three days ahead of time. Fruits that we commonly consider vegetables, like peppers, cucumbers, and squash, can be cut about two days beforehand.
When serving soup, place the soup plates or bowls on an underplate. When the soup is finished or the spoon is laid down, the spoon is left in the soup plate, not on the dish underneath. If the soup is served in a cup, the spoon is left on the saucer.
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:max_bytes(150000):strip_icc()/GettyImages-664662783-588696705f9b58bdb3edd702.jpg "The Perfect Make-Ahead Soup Buffet (1)")
