WHAT IS ALPHABET SOUP?
In the cut throat world of pasta, producers stay in business by being as efficient as possible. You’ll use one die (mold), and extrude as much dough through it as possible to make one cut of pasta. Mixed cuts like pasta mista are more of a pain because that one bag can hold several different cuts. The producer now has to individually make and store each cut, and then add another production step of mixing them all together before packing them in bags. Now imagine what a nightmare it is to do this with 26 different cuts of pasta?! And that’s just for Indo-European languages, Cyrillic has 33 characters. Imagine alphabet soup in China which has around 10,000 different characters in use? Can you spell “bankruptcy” in Chinese (破产)?
SUGGESTIONS WHEN MAKING ALPHABET SOUP
- Is Alphabet Soup Just for Kiddos?
Young ones love Alphabet shaped pasta or Alfabeto. It’s delicious no matter what your age. When this pasta floats among fresh veggies in our homemade soup they offer just enough noodle bite–without overpowering your spoonfuls with starch.
- How Do You Make This Soup Even Better?
Start with homemade stock. We encourage you to do this with any soup or sauce recipe. It will absolutely taste better. Alphabet soup can be made with either vegetable stock to keep it vegetarian or chicken stock. Check out our recipes for both!
WHAT PAIRS WELL WITH ALPHABET SOUP?
This soup is nice served with a piece of crusty bread like ciabatta. Or if you want to make your soup a bit heartier, add small pieces of poached chicken breast (see video how-to below). Or if you don’t like chicken, substitute some pieces of beef. Remember though for stew cuts, these need to cook slowly over a longer period of time in your soup, you can’t just quickly poach them. (written by Chef Stef)