Image via stock.adobe.com/ nataliazakharova

Warm up your winter menu with easy, low-cost soups

Words by: Jeremy White

Image via stock.adobe.com/ nataliazakharova

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Menu Development

November 1, 2021

Warm up your winter menu with easy, low-cost soups

Words by: Jeremy White

Easy, low-cost soups for winter menus

I love soup. Always have. As a young child my winters were filled with my mother’s homemade chili and vegetable soup. Chicken noodle soup from grandma when you were sick. Taco soup in the fall. Tomato soup with a grilled cheese sandwich for lunch.

Comfort.

That’s the word that comes to mind when I think of soup. And that’s an image I want to see conveyed on fall and winter menus. Now that we’re in the heart of fall and winter is on its way, is there really a good reason to not offer a soup of the day or to give a handful of soups coveted space on your lunch menu?

If you’re strictly pizza, believe me I get it. But if you’re open for lunch and have a full menu, soup makes so much sense. It’s inexpensive to produce, easy to make and keep, and (much like pizza) easily customized to accommodate vegetarian and meat-loving palates alike. Plus, did I mention the comfort factor?

When talking soup in a pizzeria/Italian restaurant setting, minestrone always comes to mind. It’s flavorful, difficult to mess up and popular. But we’ve published so many minestrone recipes over the years that all you really need to do to find a good one is visit PizzaToday.com. Let’s branch out a little and look at some other winners.

Nothing screams “autumn” like pumpkin. Just look around you right now at the fall decorations. Whether still left over from Halloween, or used in Thanksgiving cornucopias and décor, chances are you spotted a pumpkin somewhere today while moving around your town.

So, let’s give the season what it demands — a pumpkin soup.

The Smashed Pumpkin

Get The Smashed Pumpkin soup recipe.

Roasted Garlic Soup

For many years Jeffrey Freehof was a contributor to Pizza Today. Though he’s now out of the pizza business, “Chef Jeff” created many wonderful recipes for us during his tenure. One of them — Roasted Garlic Soup — deserves your attention this fall as you consider your soup lineup.

Get the Roasted Garlic Soup recipe.

One of my go-to soups this time of year was originally submitted to us for a recipe booklet we published many years ago. To this day it remains a favorite. This recipe was given to us by George Hadjis of Oggi’s Pizza in San Clemente, California.