Hot news for cold days: How we’re going to keep you warm this winter

In my household, Sunday nights are soup nights in winter. We get a fire roaring in the fireplace, the cats curl up on a rug in front of the grate, and I spend time in the kitchen, chopping, stirring, tending the big soup pot.

It’s a primal thing: human and fire, the soothing hearth and the beating heart. Outside, the rain may fall and the wind may howl, but in here there is sustenance and nurture.

And the other day, when I was doing just that, tending a big pot of soup, I thought: let’s make them weekly. When, last year, we noticed that any soup recipe we published absolutely flew with our foodie reader base, it became clear that we needed to feed this need. And we do listen. Why we are able to listen to you is that, being online, we can see the numbers of which of our recipes resonate with our reader base.

We’ve introduced other regular types of recipes in the past. The first, Throwback Thursday, has been running for more than two years. Then you went crazy for our weekly AirFryday recipes. Our Lekker Brekker Mondays are hitting the mark too. Now get ready for Souper Tuesday, delivering scores of soup recipes to you, once a week.

In 2o23, we brought you a host of soups, the most popular of which was traditional platteland boontjiesop (bean soup). Other soups we delivered included roasted butternut, pea and ham, cream of mushroom, and broccoli and Cheddar.

These and all of our forthcoming soup recipes will be captured in a database that you will be able to access online, so that you can trawl through them whenever you fancy making a broth.

We have much, much more coming your way. There’s a world of soups out there and I’m going to be cooking them on Sundays and sharing them with you on Tuesdays.

First up, next Tuesday (June 11) will be a true classic: the Italian soup known and loved as minestrone. As always, I’ll share some of the history and lore surrounding a traditional soup. At other times, as I often do, I’ll make my own invention of a soup, such as the biltong and blue cheese broth I have in mind. That is coming soon as well.

For the second Souper Tuesday, I have a deeply hearty beefy beans and bone marrow soup for you, followed a week later by pea and ham hock soup, a variation of the recipe, using a whole, huge ham hock to cook for hours and hours and become more and more desirable.

And, at The Foodies Wife’s request, there’s going to be that beloved old leek and potato soup; not vichyssoise, that’s the chilled version, but the hot alternative.

And from then on we’ll just go mad with soups as the ideas keep coming.

Talking of which, keep coming back every week for more helpings of Souper Tuesday. DM



Tony Jackman is Galliova Food Writer 2023, jointly with TGIFood columnist Anna Trapido. Order his book, foodSTUFF, here

Follow Tony Jackman on Instagram @tony_jackman_cooks.

This dish is photographed on wares by Mervyn Gers Ceramics.