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Cooking Soups in the Oven

post #1 of 5
10/26/09 at 7:42am
Thread Starter 
Good morning. I am hoping someone here can help me with an ongoing issue. My husband (the true cook in the family) has tried on two occasions to cook large quantities of soup (once Chicken Noodle and once Beef Barley) for family dinners the night before the event in the oven.
He uses a large, covered aluminum pot, and cooks at 240 for the entire day. The trouble is, the soup smells/tastes delicious when it comes out of the oven, but when we retrieve it from the refrigerator the next day for the family gathering, it smells awful! We have had to toss both pots of soup, and make hasty alternate plans.
Any suggestions? Our refrigerator works fine (so that is not the issue), the pot is in good condition (there is no rust/bad spots on the pot itself), the beef and chicken were freshly purchased (so they were not "bad"), and he cooled the pot for one hour before refrigerating. Please help, as we hate the thought of being embarrassed a THIRD time! :)
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post #2 of 5
10/26/09 at 8:15am
My guess would be in the cooling step.
1 hour doesn't tell us if the soup was cooled to the proper temperature.
A lot has to do with whether you are cooling in the pot you cooked in (which is how it sounds), the size and thickness of the pot, etc.
Cooked foods that are not immediately served need to be cooled quickly and stored in a refrigerator or cooler. Potentially hazardous foods must be cooled from 60°C (140°F) to 20°C (70°F) or less within two hours and then from 20°C (70° F) to 4°C (40°F) or less within four hours.
Your soups should cool faster than something dense like mashed potatoes.
I would transfer the cooked soup into smaller storage vessels and cool in an ice bath until safe to put in the cooler.
Not only will putting too-warm food into your cooler be unsafe for that food it will also raise the ambient temperature of the cooler putting your other foods at risk.

But maybe I'm wrong, maybe the material your soup pot is made of is somehow the culprit.
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post #3 of 5
10/26/09 at 8:16am
How is he cooling it for that hour?

If he's not icing it and stirring it to quickly lower the temperature, it's probably not being cooled low enough fast enough.

A large pot of soup can hold it's temp a long time making it a prime bacteria growth medium, even under refrigeration.
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post #4 of 5
10/26/09 at 8:22am
You need to make sure you cool the soup before it is refrigerated. In commercial kitchens we often use long tubes that get filled with water and then are frozen. These get inserted into the soup pot as it cools. At home you can use the same technique with a frozen bottle of water. An hour is not nearly enough time to cool the interior of many soups unless they have been setting in an ice bath.
My first question is why would you want to bake soup? Since you are cooking it the entire day there is the possibility that you have getting a chemical reaction from cooking so long and slow in aluminum that is generating the bad smell.
Hopefully you are using anodized aluminum for that process. You may want to consider a more conventional method of making soup or trying a new pot such as SS or enameled cast iron.
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post #5 of 5
10/26/09 at 9:12am
Too much aluminum, too much time.

As everyone else said, you're cooling regimen ain't the greatest; but that ain't the biggest part of your problem.

What you're smelling and tasting is aluminum reacting to various components in the soup(s); which alas, isn't yuminum.

I'd like to see you invest the big bucks ($20ish) in a decent stainless stock pot. But it may be easier for me to spend your money than it is for you. If, in your opinion as Secretary of the Treasury/Domestic Goddess the soup tastes good when it has finished baking (?!), you don't have to change a thing. (Don't allow your husband an opinion, he's only a cook. What does he know?)

That is, don't change until the soup comes out of the oven (?!!). THEN, immediately decant the soup into glass, commercial plastic storage containers, stainless steel pots or bowls, or anything non-reactive which can handle the heat; and cool until barely warm on the counter (smaller containers will cool faster than your great big pot -- size matters). Finally refrigerate until needed.

Hope this helps,
BDL
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