Culinary Cowardice

She drops the beans into the soup, and truthfully she isn’t really prepared for such an addition. 

Cooking is a science, and as much as it can be said to border on madness there are few that bother with a dish that is both good and foolhardy. 

Lost Recipes, by Marion Cunningham makes that point clear even with her least balanced recipes. Take page 30 for instance, the last page of the chapter on soups, making ideally a full eight cups for the home-cook and their hungry crowd. 

Oatmeal soup.

With a basic preparation of butter, onions and uncooked oatmeal, one would expect for it to be bland. This isn’t wholly inaccurate, even the most ignorant would likely understand that onions alone do not make a dish savory, the addition of chicken broth doesn't do much more, adding 1 cup pre-cooked oatmeal as the thickening agent simply confuses things.

Adding breakfast to dinner is rarely a good idea, such additions as parsley, salt & pepper weren’t gonna fix that. The usual and if I may say, wrong question is, why make such a thing as oatmeal soup?

The answer quite simply is less than hidden in the previous paragraphs, erstwhile the original recipe is oversimple if counterintuitive farther modifications reap many benefits. Such things as simple as almost any proportion of Mirepoix heighten the dish to the point of preferred repetition.

That being, three to four days per three quart pot. If it outlasts one’s appetite.

Make no mistake, while the original recipe is of dubious reception barring those easily impressed by novel concoctions, such as I, the basic ingredient, toasted oatmeal is one that carries the most weight as far as smell, texture and taste.

All the fairer made, with the addition of carrots, garlic and celery to the first step. Sizes vary, but that basis was what made the correction.

As always in regards to unbalanced recipes, and in their correction, one must accept the real limits of their ingredients, but they must not invent them. Oats at any level of processing have a definite taste, sweeter and softer than wheat, and more so overall than barley, this is true and most notable when one tries any of them bereaved of additions. 

In short, the secret of soup was to accept it as soup, be it with Epis, Sofrito, or Trinity's Holy and with pope.

Additions later, greenery of most common sorts, scallions and spinach, then bok choy, and common cabbage. In theory almost any type of vegetation could be added without undermining the flavor provided by the toasted oats themselves. 

Though stronger meats should be avoided for similar reasons as while oats marry well with most greenery, beef is just the wrong base to use. Which leaves the question of common chili meats like over-seasoned sausage and smoked pork little more than a sorry interlude.

Though to be fair one could argue that the considerable changes of such iterations were and are enough to discount its original name. Or at the very least reconstitute the name as erroneous or grandfathered rather than literal.

I plead with such people, should any dish be defined by its least sensible aspect? An oatmeal soup needs only to be a meal defined by use and priority of the oats in a meal, and barring my preferred ridiculous definition, one hardly makes flour of the oats before reconstitution into a ‘meal’ in that traditional sense.

If you have a preference for whole oats, you’re hardly ingesting ‘oatmeal’ even if you aren’t eating it raw in the manner of a horse or- anyway.

Take no offense, but it would be best to continue forth to the actual test of bravery.

This being two fold, beans and the ingredients necessary to support them. 

Now some among you might find the implications of this amusing, but I will still argue that there are strict limits to what can be done with beans, especially in a soup with oats. As while I have certainly had tomatoes as a side to sweetened oatmeal on occasion it was most certainly the contrast that excused such decisions, and I don’t imagine that all the staple ingredients to most chilis would work with oats no matter how well toasted.

Cooked tomatoes for instance are generally of a different flavor and texture from the raw in any case or variety, so the addition seems unpreferable to the palate, and most derivatives wouldn’t balance well with the rather finicky grain, even if they marry well to the legume.

Sofrito, as in the most basic aromatics of Mediterranean cuisine can refer to many different flavor balances one would prefer in a sauce, soup or otherwise, and is also in its most common American iterations a closer basis for many shades of chili.

The basis being close enough to Mirepoix commonly replacing carrots for peppers, though still commonly enough bearing both for the sake of more differing palates.

Though for the sake of some, such a thing should not be the expectation, as many both fitful and aware are incapable of sauteing a carrot with any success and really there’s being gregarious in regards to food and then there's making a mess vicariously in someone else's kitchen.

Still, even if an oatmeal chili would need be white I believe that the most preferable addition would be something sour. With the soft sweet spice one would prefer a high contrast addition, such as wine, vinegar, juice or cider. 

Though it might be the case that I’m treating the oats a bit too much like rice.

Still, barring the specific additions contingent of course with that week’s groceries, the new recipe has become clear.

One should start by sifting the beans of stones and ill-formations, before boiling them for about an hour, one might prefer to skip this step either by potentially poisoning themselves or by buying some over-seasoned beans from a can. 

One should remember that this step is simply a common necessity of anything that has been harvested from the ground, and while I would not besmirch the skills of those underpaid workers, the assurity of one’s own hand is often preferable to the alternative, I personally find some enjoyment in the test of vision.

Though some might just be over excited for a task of such tedium, in that case I implore you to appropriately read labels and avoid anything pre-flavored as such additions won’t serve well the balance of the dish.

At least the first time, choose something plain, and please rinse off the excess salt, it won’t serve anything for its addition to tip the balance of your soup.

Whether you are doing this properly or not the next step is cutting the base Mirepoix plus pepper and garlic, and whatever your preferred vegetation is for this iteration, those who would like to do it wrong can crack and drain their beans.

One can then start the pot, with a tab or so of butter or similar amount of oil, the oats can be added to toast once the oil shimmers or the butter has melted. They should be stirred and turned consistently to keep from burning, and until lightly browned from their raw state.

The Mirepoix and Pepper can be added then, it should be sauteed in much the same way as the oats before, you may need more of whatever fat you chose, but the goal is to soften this time.

Once that has occurred Garlic can be added, then stock, and most other vegetation, as well as the beans at any point from then.

Some ideal additives for garnish include the spinach and scallions from earlier, but if you’re cutting from a titanic onion, anything larger than a very small pumpkin, you may set some aside for that as well.

Really, that serves as close as can be for a relevant gauge of proportions in such a recipe as oatmeal soup, it’s really a ‘you pick’ recipe after the first and most important addition of a flavor base.

You my dear reader might be questioning, where in this piece have you mentioned the setting? It’s too simple an answer, but this piece has been ‘set’ in a town of cowards, as it is a fair assumption that most reading this have neglected the experience of oatmeal soup if they’ve ever heard of it. 

At the very least between you and I, wouldn’t it be absurd to add beans of any sort to oatmeal soup?

I know that it isn’t good manners to end a story with an accusation, but I’d say fair enough, since I’ve never had such a dish as Oatmeal Soup with Beans, and really the folks that lurk on a networking site is a pretty loose definition of town.