Serious Eats / Lorena Masso

On the coldest winter nights, nothing warms me up faster than a steaming hot bowl of soup. My woolly sweaters and space heater just won’t cut it, and most evenings, I find myself heading to the kitchen to turn the contents of my fridge into a delicious, nourishing soup. Below, you’ll find 18 soup recipes from around the world—including broths, noodle soups, and chowders—that will warm you up from head to toe. Don’t feel like eating the whole pot? Freeze your leftovers for an easy, warming meal that can be quickly heated up on the next cold day.

Serious Eats / Julia Estrada

Great onion soup requires just two things: onions slowly caramelized in butter until they’re soft and golden brown—and a good broth. No amount of melted cheese and toasty bread will make up for a subpar base, but if the base is done right you’ll be savoring a masterpiece. If you don’t have homemade beef or chicken stock, good-quality store-bought chicken broth is the next best thing.

Serious Eats / Julia Estrada

For an intensely savory soup with plump pearls of barley and tender vegetables, the process is practically identical to that for beef stew. Start with a collagen-rich cut of beef like chuck roast or short rib, then brown it in large pieces to prevent the meat from getting tough. Adding sautéed vegetables toward the end of cooking ensures they don’t turn to mush.

Serious Eats / Diana Chistruga

The best kind of fish chowder has a creamy base loaded with natural seafood flavor. This easy one-pot recipe gives us that and more in about 40 minutes, making it a convenient weeknight meal. Cooking the bacon in a little water kickstarts the fat-rendering, and leaving out the salmon until the end ensures the fish stays moist and tender.

Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

Torn between Taco Tuesday and hunkering down with a big steaming bowl of soup on a frigid night? We’ve solved that conundrum with this cheesy, tortilla-topped taco soup that’s loaded with hearty ground beef and smoky charred vegetables. Adding some crushed tortilla chips to the simmering soup helps thicken it, while also enhancing the savory corn flavor.

Continue to 5 of 18 below

Serious Eats / Lorena Masso

With tender melt-in-your-mouth chunks of beef, buttery bits of bone marrow and tendon, and a colorful array of fresh vegetables, this Filipino beef soup is deeply comforting. Roast the corn and potatoes before you add them to the soup, which deepens their flavors and helps them retain their shape.

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

Slurping noodles from a bowl of intensely flavorful broth is one way to instantly warm yourself up. This Thai soup features tender duck braised in an aromatic soy base, garlicky noodles, and fresh greens. The hot broth is ladled over duck, noodles, and greens at the end to create a complex and comforting soup.

Serious Eats / Lorena Masso

Pozole dates back to the Aztecs and is centered around corn or hominy. Our version is made with pork and infused with a sweet, fruity, mildly spicy combination of California, guajillo, and ancho chiles, The bright red soup is finished with a rainbow of toppings like tostadas, lime wedges, thin slices of cabbage, onion, radish, and avocado.

Vicky Wasik

If you’ve never thought about freezing your tofu, you should. Freezing and thawing tofu expands its protein structure, creating air pockets for a chewier, spongier texture that soaks up flavor like nobody’s business. Where it truly shines is in braises and soups like this comforting one consisting of pork, cabbage, chicken stock, garlic, and ginger.

Continue to 9 of 18 below

Serious Eats / Jen Causey

Many iterations of harira exist throughout Morocco—some versions made with beef, some with chicken, and some completely vegan. Our version, made with vegetable broth, features chickpeas and lentils and is finished with a drizzle of beaten egg to form little wispy egg bits in the soup. A mixture of water and cornstarch is added towards the end of cooking thickens the soup, giving it a distinctively smooth and silky texture.

Serious Eats / Fred Hardy

This version of pasta e fagioli has just two main ingredients—beans and pasta—and how delicious the soup will depend on the quality of those beans. Get nice beans that haven’t been sitting on a shelf for years and cook them properly, and you’ll unlock the beauty of what a bean can be. Use really old beans and cook them poorly, and the soup will suffer. If you’d rather skip the long simmering time, try Kenji’s 30-minute version that starts with canned beans.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Rice porridge can range from a risotto-like consistency to a very thick soup. Since there are very few ingredients, it’s crucial to use a good-quality broth, preferably one that’s homemade with a whole chicken. Toasting the rice in oil before combining it with the broth helps develop its flavor and keeps the grains whole as they meld into the porridge.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

This Ukrainian borscht is a hearty wintertime classic and an omnivore’s delight. The pleasantly sweet and soup soup features an exciting array of meat and vegetables, and adding raw beets to the soup—instead of roasting them first—helps them retain their earthy flavor and vivid color.

Continue to 13 of 18 below

Serious Eats / Qi Ai

While this North Dakotan classic is little more than good chicken broth, dumplings, and cream, nailing just the right consistency—somewhere between a rich chicken soup and a béchamel—involved a bit of tinkering. We add milk and baking powder for a softer dumpling, and to ensure all the dumplings cook evenly, we roll and cut the dough ahead of time so they can be added to the soup all at once.

Serious Eats / Morgan Hunt Glaze

A big bowl of thick and creamy tomato soup—the kind that clings to hunks of crusty bread or a grilled cheese sammy—is what we crave on a cold rainy day. For our take on the iconic Nordstrom tomato basil soup, we swapped out oil for butter and brown it, which gives the soup a delightful nuttiness.

Serious Eats / Diana Chistruga

We’ve all had past-their-prime mushrooms languishing in the fridge at one time or another. Their soft spots don’t make them particularly appetizing on pizzas or salads, but they’re still fine for creamy mushroom soup, where those flaws get blended away. A little flour thickens up the soup base to a creamy consistency, even without heavy cream, so you can totally make this a vegan soup by swapping out the butter and chicken stock with a plant-based alternative.

Serious Eats / Vicky Wasik

Slow-roasting sweet potatoes on low heat accentuates their sweetness, while finishing them with a blast of high heat gently caramelizes them. A topping of pistachio and orange gremolata adds a nice finish to the velvety soup.

Continue to 17 of 18 below

Serious Eats / Amanda Suarez

Roasting the cauliflower before simmering and blending it brings out the vegetable’s sweet, nutty flavors. Puréed until silky-smooth and topped with curry cream, this soup is as comforting as it is elegant.

Serious Eats / Qi Ai

This 100% vegan soup is flavor-packed with nutty, cheesy tang, a touch of smoke, and plenty of chives or scallions. Roasted cauliflower, cashews, and potatoes form the backbone of this satisfying soup. We even top it with vegan mushroom bacon bits, broccoli florets, and vegan sour cream. How’s that for fully loaded?