(gentle music) - Hi, I'm Jacques Pépin, and this is "American Masters at Home."

I love soup and usually when I do soup, I do a bunch of it because I can freeze it and you know, re-heat it when I need it.

In that case here, I'm gonna start with a couple of tablespoons of oil.

Have a good cup and a half of onion here, diced.

You know, the proportion here, this is a coarse type of soup.

So it doesn't really matter.

The quantity also could be a little more of this, a little less of that, use what you have in your refrigerator and in your freezer.

So here I have like a cup and a half.

Two cups at the most of onion.

Will saute in there.

Okay, for a couple of minutes.

And leek, of course I always use leek in my soup.

I have a nice leek here.

This is a bit tougher on the outside, but that's about not more than that, I would remove.

And now cut it, always cut it in half like this, because this is when you have to wash it, as you can see, the dirt here.

So you rinse it under water.

Here is my leek.

And again, relatively coarse like this.

Yeah, about two cup of leek here.

One leek.

So we start by sauteing this for a couple of minutes with the garlic and this, I'm gonna very coarsely chop it.

All right.

There we are in there.

(sizzling) Yeah, cook two, three minutes here.

And then I add seven cups of chicken stock here.

And kale.

This is a kale soup.

So here I have about eight, nine cups of kale.

And this is about half a pound.

Again, if you have a little more, a little less, whatever you can use color green.

Even lettuce, sometimes I have lettuce leftover, I use them in soup.

So I wanna bring that to a boil now.

Before doing more.

Okay, so that's come to a strong boil.

Now I wanna thicken it with a little bit of a polenta and what I do usually, I just mix that with a cup of cold water or cold stock.

Because usually, otherwise when you put it in there, very often, it forms big lump.

So here you dilute it like this.

Okay.

And that now, that polenta has to come to a boil and cook for about 15, 20 minutes.

Okay, well, my soup has been cooking here for 20 minutes.

Beautiful.

So now it's time for me to add a can of tomato.

A can of garbanzo beans and I put the juice with it, you know?

All right, rinse that with a bit of water.

Okay.

And then I add like three quarter of a teaspoon of salt.

Remember my stock was not salted, and about a teaspoon of pepper.

So here I'll have, you know, about eight, 10 cups of soup.

So it has to come back to a boil now, It boils maybe a minute or so.

And that's it.

See, my soup is cooked now.

Beautiful soup.

I love soup.

Now, look at that.

I mean, this is a whole meal in itself, you know, so I will freeze it.

This way, you know.

I made a mess around my plate.

I always put a bit of herb on top if I have around, that's helpful.

But there I would divide it now in a container, freeze it, and it's always welcome at my house.

Happy cooking.

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Thank you.

And happy cooking.

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