Soup for lunch-- possible???

princessleah

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 11:18 am

I'm having people over for lunch on Shabbat and I wanted to serve soup.
If I put it in the crockpot before Shabbat starts, and let it go all night until lunch, won't it be boiling boiling hot by the time we eat? Will it be overcooked?

Has anyone ever tried to serve crockpot soup for lunch or is this idea just totally not plausible? By soup I mean soup, liquidy, not cholent or thick anything.

TIA!!!

Barbara

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 11:21 am

princessleah wrote:

We do it with chicken or black bean soup all the time, no problems.

princessleah

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 11:32 am

Barbara-- You have chicken soup in the crockpot from before Shabbat and it's not boiling by the time lunch rolls around? Do you COOK it in the crockpot or put it in cooked already? On what setting?

HR-- can you explain what you mean by plata-- like the kind you plug in the wall? Do you have the pot sitting from before Shabbat?

Since Shabbat starts so early, it's many many hours-- probably like 19 from start of Shabbat to lunch.

HindaRochel

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 11:36 am

princessleah wrote:

Sorry...a blech...yeah one of those electric things that you plug into a wall. I've also done it with a blech that goes over the stove. And yes, you have to put it on before Shabbat. But in winter it is nice to have soup for lunch. Just use a big pot and more water than the norm.

Doesn't your crock have settings to just stay warm? It shouldn't keep getting hotter and hotter...at least form my understanding.

soboz

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 11:40 am

I make chicken soup in the crockpot regularly for Shabbos lunch. I boil the chicken and vegetables for half an hour on Friday morning and then cook on high in crockpot until before Shabbos, when I turn the crockpot down to low. The soup is great - and much lighter than cholent!!

Ima2NYM_LTR

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 11:45 am

I make 1 big pot of soup and right b4 shabbos separate out what I want for the next day and put that in the crock pot (no 'soup stuff', just liquid). Then any leftover 'soup stuff' after diner I put into a storage container, the next morning I put it on top of the soup tog et rid of the chill, but it doesnt get warm enough to worry about it being cooking (the veggies and stuff are still moist, so I have to be careful)

louche

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 11:48 am

Water cannot get hotter than the boiling point unless it's under pressure as in a pressure cooker. (If you want to get technical, the salts dissolved in the soup raise the boiling point a bit, so soup does get hotter than plain water, but the difference is so small as to be irrelevant. I'm just showing off that I still remember a smidgen of my college chemistry.) No matter how long your soup is heated, it will reach the boil and get no hotter until all the water boils off and only solids are left. At that point, the solids will get hotter and hotter and eventually burn, but it won't matter because it won't be soup any more. (It will be delicious, though. BTDT.)

What will happen as water evaporates is that the soup will get more concentrated and tastier.

I keep my soup on the blech on my gas-flame stove and it's great. IMO there is no such thing as overcooked soup in any case. The longer it cooks the richer the flavor. If you make enough so the pot is as full as practicable without boiling over, you don't have to worry about its all boiling away, and what's wrong with hot soup? If you're serving babies, keep a small portion set aside in the fridge (assuming you cook the soup before shabbos ) and add some cold soup to the hot soup in the bowl just before serving, or ladle out some ahead of time to cool off for the kiddies.

If you don't serve soup Friday night, you can make the soup a bit more watery than you like, and by Shabbat lunch it should be just right.

HindaRochel

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 11:49 am

Ima2NYM_LTR wrote:

But are you then allowed to add it back into the soup? Only into a kli shishi?

princessleah

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 12:13 pm

I guess I was concerned about the heat, because sometimes on early Shabbats, I'll make something in the crockpot, put it on low in the morning and shut it off right before Shabbat begins and eat it for dinner, and it is always BOILING HOT. Maybe if I put it on "warm" and not "low" it will not be as hot?

So further questions:

1) should I pre-cook the soup and then put it on "warm"? Or just dump in the ingredients and put it on "low" for all those hours? Or another variation?

2) Is there a danger of bacteria if you have this thing going on warm for 19 hours? Aren't we not "supposed to" do that, health-wise? It will be vegetarian so I'm not concerned so much about meat/chicken-borne bacteria.

mamaleh

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 12:25 pm

We've been doing soup (chamoud) the last few weeks. I put everything in raw right before shabbos (I even put in frozen chicken wings) and leave it on low. It has been great. I did try to cook the rice in a bag in the soup, but that didn't work too well (not horrible but not what I wanted) so now I just cook it before Shabbos and take it out of the fridge in the morning to de-chill.
eta- the Yekkies often do a 'bonen zoup' for shabbos- if you know any yekkies you could ask them how they do it

louche

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 1:24 pm

princessleah wrote:

Is there a danger of bacteria if you have this thing going on warm for 19 hours?

Read the owner's manual. One of the meilehs of a crock pot is that it's supposed to keep food hot enough to prevent bacterial growth over the long haul. What I'd be leery of is putting frozen blocks of food into the pot . A frozen block in a warm environment will develop spots that are at exactly the right temperature to incubate spoilage germs while some parts are hot and others are still ice-cold. If you put food in at room temp and it's in pieces, not blocks, it should heat up to a safe temp before germs can be a problem.

Ima2NYM_LTR

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 1:42 pm

HindaRochel wrote:

Ima2NYM_LTR wrote:

But are you then allowed to add it back into the soup? Only into a kli shishi?

I then put the stuff in a bowl and put the warm soup in a bowl (crock pot was on low, not high) so there is no cooking involved

HindaRochel

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 1:52 pm

Ima2NYM_LTR wrote:

HindaRochel wrote:

Ima2NYM_LTR wrote:

But are you then allowed to add it back into the soup? Only into a kli shishi?

I then put the stuff in a bowl and put the warm soup in a bowl (crock pot was on low, not high) so there is no cooking involved

Soup first? I always thought it was the other way around...ok, thanks for the info!

PinkFridge

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 2:14 pm

princessleah wrote:

You may want to do a trial run.

louche

Tue, Dec 14 2010, 2:26 pm

HindaRochel wrote:

Soup first? I always thought it was the other way around...ok, thanks for the info!

I believe if you ladle soup out of a pot into a bowl, the bowl is a kli shlishi, with the ladle being the sheni and the pot being the rishon. That is, assuming you don't leave the ladle in the soup pot for any appreciable length of time, which would make it a rishon.