A slow-simmered soup is one of the most rewarding meals you can make when the weather is chilly. However, some soups take hours, even days, to prepare — valuable time that could be spent playing in the snow or watching your favorite show. And while many are worth the effort, chefs insist that some soups are far better when made by a local restaurant that specializes in the dish.
Here are six soups that even professional chefs don’t bother making at home.
Consommé
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“It’s probably not worth making anything too complex or wasteful,” says 2014 F&W Best New Chef Matthew Accarrino. For him, that means consommé, a richly flavored French soup that is traditionally clarified using a mixture of meat and egg whites called a raft. The raft draws out the broth’s impurities, which are skimmed off the surface, but it’s eventually disposed of, resulting in a crystal-clear soup.
“We make beautiful consommés in the restaurant, but the clarification raft is made of a whole list of ingredients that we often have on hand, and you don’t even get to eat that part.”
Lobster bisque
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“Soups with expensive ingredients might be too much of a bother to make at home,” says 1994 F&W Best New Chef Gale Gand. “They’re the kind of soups you just need one cup or bowl of every once in a while to satisfy the craving, so cooking a whole batch doesn’t really make sense.”
If you’re going to invest in high-quality lobster, prepare a dish that highlights the ingredients in its purest form, like Maine-style lobster rolls or steamed lobster with corn.
French onion
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While French onion soup is less expensive to prepare, it’s still not worth the effort for Gand. “It takes hours of slow cooking to caramelize those onions,” she says. “Just go to your favorite French bistro and tuck into a bowl there. Let them do the chopping and stirring of dozens of onions. You have better things to do!”
Pho
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“Pho is something I always go out for,” says 2025 F&W Best New Chef Jordan Rubin of the classic Vietnamese soup. Traditional beef pho broth involves roasting and charring spices and aromatics and often using a large variety of animal parts, like bones, brisket, shank, and oxtail. It’s certainly a fun day-long culinary project, but not something you can whip up on a weeknight.
Split pea
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According to 2011 F&W Best New Chef Jason Franey, there’s no shortcut to excellent split pea soup. The thick, savory soup, often combined with ham or crispy bacon, takes upward of three hours to make. “It’s very hard to keep it nice and green and achieve depth of flavor without cooking it for a long period of time,” he says.
Chicken noodle
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When you or your loved ones are feeling under the weather, chicken noodle soup can seem just as effective as penicillin. But rather than wasting time laboring for hours over homemade broth, 1989 F&W Best New Chef Christopher Gross suggests using store-bought.
“Heat up some good broth, add a knob of butter, some leftover chicken, and thinly sliced vegetables,” he says. “It’s a five-minute meal that tastes just as good as the slow-cooked version.”
Dining and Cooking