…turn them into something tasty, like this Cream of Asparagus Soup! I’ve previously written about saving your vegetable trimmings to turn them into a tasty stock, but asparagus stalks I save in another bag by themselves. We’ve eaten a lot of asparagus in the past few months, so I had well over a pound of trimmings saved in the freezer. At the first burst of chilly fall weather, I decided to turn those asparagus stalks into a hearty Cream of Asparagus Soup.
This was a two day process for me because…you guessed it: I decided to make my own chicken stock for the soup base. I save chicken bones like I do vegetables, adding to gallon freezer bags as I go. When I have carrots or celery, on their way out or not, I’ll stick a few in my vegetable or chicken stock bags so that I really only have to empty the bag into a pot and add water. I also cook with fresh herbs weekly, but still seem to have some left over. Before those herbs go bad, I pop some in those bags of veggie trimmings and chicken bones – anything goes: parsley, thyme, sage, rosemary – whatever you have on hand will lend itself to the flavor of your stock.
This particular time, I made chicken stock the day before I was going to make my asparagus soup. I let the chicken stock chill overnight so that I could easily skim the hardened excess fat from the top before I cooked with it.
Once skimmed, I added my asparagus trimmings and let them simmer to create this recipe (tweaked from epicurious), adding two 12oz. packages of frozen asparagus spears for more flavor:
What’s your go-to fall soup?