TREND BITES:
Global Soups
Consumers are seeking new, globally-inspired experiences while also craving comfort as we head toward winter. It seems pretty clear that we should offer them global soups! Not only does soup meet the need for coziness, but it's also a great carrier for global flavors and a fantastic platform to get creative with ingredients. According to The Food Institute, this year, "cooks, grocers, retailers, and more will likely use soup as the perfect medium to experience other global flavors."
Chicken Noodle Soup is a Global Comfort Food
While all soups are comfort foods, we wanted to give a special nod to chicken noodle soup. Many global cuisines have their own version of a comforting soup that includes chicken and noodles. For example, the Vietnamese soup, pho ga, translates to "chicken rice noodle soup" and uses white flour noodles, a sweet and spicy sauce, and chicken. Greece's avgolemono has a creamy broth made from chicken stock, egg yolk, and lemon juice, and it often includes orzo pasta. Ramen, a Japanese soup, is traditionally made with pork but is now just as commonly served with chicken on American menus. Serve your own version of Chicken Ramen using our recipe!
The Benefits of Globally-"INSPIRED" Dishes
Chances are, your operation doesn't serve authentic global cuisine, and that's absolutely fine. Your customers don't expect you to. Still, it's important to understand that consumers highly value authenticity and might be skeptical of trying a global dish from an operation not known for that cuisine. That's why we recommend using the word "inspired," when naming your dishes. Serve Pho Ga-Inspired Soup or Birria-Inspired Stew to explain that you combined the expertise you have of your native cuisine with inspiration from a borrowed tradition to make something new and delicious.
Try these chicken soup recipes!
Asian Soup
Soups are a huge part of Asian cuisines. In many countries, soup is served as an entree, and they can be savory or sweet in flavor. They are valued for their nourishing and medicinal properties.
The Asian soup we chose to focus on is Laksa. In 2022, trendologist Mike Kostyo claimed that Laksa was the next popular Asian soup trend that operators don't want to miss out on, and he was absolutely right. According to Datassential, Laksa has been steadily climbing in menu mentions over the past four years, with 27% growth. As Kostyo describes, "Rich, creamy, curry-based broths, typically made with coconut milk, are leading the U.S. trend, often topped with proteins like chicken, shrimp, or fried tofu (or all three) and finished with a hard-boiled egg and a range of herbs and vegetables, including bean sprouts, sambal, and fried shallots."
Asian-inspired soup recipes in our library include Laksa, Chicken Ramen, and Tom Kha Gai.European Soup
Europe's soup traditions range from hearty porridges to meaty stews. In "The Art of Soup," Saveur points out that for much of European history, soup was popular due to it being an economical way of turning leftovers into a satisfying meal.
The European soup we chose is Italy's gnocchi soup. Gnocchi is a super comfort food because it's a cross between noodles and dumplings, being made of flour, egg, and mashed potato. Like many European soups, gnocchi soup was popularized because it was cheap for peasants to make in regions where they could easily grow potatoes but not grains.
In addition to this Chicken Gnocchi recipe, we also have Italian-inspired Tuscan White Bean Chicken Soup and Chicken Lasagna Soup.Latin American Soup
Latin American soups often combine native ingredients with culinary traditions brought to Central and South America by other parts of the world. As The Epicurean Traveler explains, beans and potatoes are common in Latin American soups because they're native to the Americas, but "the influx of people from other cultures, particularly from Spain, Portugal, and West Africa, has influenced ingredients, too."
Our culinary team made a flavor-packed Chicken Pozole Verde, inspired by the traditional Mexican pozole. You can also use our Chicken Birria recipe to create a trendy Birria Ramen (or Birriamen) like we show in the top image. Birriamen is a combination of Mexican birria and Japanese ramen that has been gaining in popularity over the past few years.
Some of our most Soup-able chicken:
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