The Biggest Step You're Skipping When Making Soup, According To Andrew Zimmern

From under-seasoning or over-seasoning food to undercooking or overcooking it, there are quite a few things that could make or break whatever dish you are making. Of all the things that could possibly go wrong while making a soup, the biggest disaster is making a soup that tastes disastrous. How do you avoid that? While demonstrating how he makes roasted tomato soup in a Youtube video, seasoned cook and bonafide adventurous eater Andrew Zimmern had this advice: "You want to do what most people never do in their kitchens: taste their soup."

The Kitchn reports that tasting your food as you go along the cooking process cues you in on what different, possibly unfamiliar ingredients taste like as well as figure out what flavor profiles tickle your pickle the most. Good Housekeeping notes that recipes serve as guidelines for at-home cooks, but that above all else, you should trust your taste buds. Because of this, it is highly important that you taste whatever it is you are making as you go along the cooking process.

A piece by Heated stresses that you should always taste your food no matter how comfortable you are making a certain dish. This sentiment is illustrated by Zimmern in his video as he proceeds to taste his sumptuous-looking soup twice, noting the second time that he "will taste it again to make sure it is right." Upon tasting it for a second time, Zimmern proclaims that the soup "came alive" after he added a bit more seasoning to it. 

Heated also asserts that at-home cooks should use their own judgment when it comes to adding things like salt and additional spices, as one should judge a recipe based on what is in front of them versus what a recipe says. There could be many variations that differentiate what you are making (things like stove cooking temperatures or slight differences in ingredient measurements). Another thing that tasting as you go can help with is the dreaded over-seasoning. An Insider article notes that by adding seasoning little by little and tasting your food, you can avoid adding too much of an ingredient (looking at you, salt).