Fish Soups

Appears in
The Best Recipes in the World: More Than 1,000 International Dishes to Cook at Home
The Best Recipes in the World

By Mark Bittman

Published 2005

  • About

Fish stock is delicious and far quicker and easier to make than chicken or meat stock. It improves most fish soups, but it’s rarely essential. What is essential, as with all dishes containing fish, is freshness for a discussion of this.

Unlike most soups, fish soups are usually best prepared at the last minute, because many fish—especially finfish—overcook in the heat of a soup. You can often make the base one day and add the fish the next, but as a group these are so quick and easy that there isn’t much point.