When you're cooking Turkey, one thing you can work on immediately (and then freeze) is your stock. This may seem boring, but stock is the backbone of many Thanksgiving dishes, most notably stuffing and gravy.

Allegedly, there’s no wrong way to make a pot of puréed vegetable soup. But I dunno — have you ever made a really bad batch? At its worst, it’s truly unsalvageable; a bland, watery disaster that no amount of clever seasoning and full-fat dairy can help.

Frozen peas add a pop of sweetness and colour to all sorts of dishes, but I particularly appreciate them in rich soups and stews. Their bright flavour offers a bit of vegetal respite from meaty and creamy flavours and — if you add them right at the end — they can help cool your soup down to a reasonable, less painful temperature.

Winter weather means it’s time for three things: pumpkin spice, actual pumpkins, and warming, filling soups (pumpkin soups, even!). I don’t particularly enjoy pumpkin (or its spice) as a flavour, but soup is something I can — and will — fuck with (heavily).

If you ever have an excess of zucchini or tomatoes and don't know what to do with them, don't panic. There are plenty of options, and a good gazpacho is definitely one of them. It’s a delicious, no-heat-required way to obliterate a ton of produce and you don’t even need a recipe, just a few pantry items, a blender of some sort and a little faith.

For the uninitiated, this is chicken and rice soup with a hint of lemon and dill. For those in the know, this is the good stuff. This is the stuff I wasn't allowed to make during my time in the Greek restaurant, because it's the kind of thing only a mother's touch can truly perfect. I am, however, one persistent mother, and got to learnin', though I will admit it's a bit complicated.

Whether or not there’s any actual science behind it, lots of people swear by the sickness-busting properties of raw garlic. Some of my friends and family will actually chow down on raw cloves in an attempt to send their symptoms packing.

Eating is a sensory experience, and sometimes it’s a good idea to re-set your senses. Maybe you’ve been eating too many aggressively flavourful foods, maybe your stomach is iffy due to illness (or indulgence), or maybe you just don’t feel like doing. In any case, a bowl of soupy, falling-apart, porridge-like rice is what you need.

Hello, and welcome back to Will It Casserole?, the column where I take your delicious concepts and re-imagine them as casserole creations. It’s been a while since we’ve casseroled together, and this split pea soup situation is truly a return to form.

Quick, think of things that are fast! Rockets? OK. Cheetahs? Sure, absolutely. Bullets? Oh, yes, quite. A bowl of rich, creamy soup? Ah, generally, no. Not so much. Then why do we call cars that have been made to go faster “souped-up?”

I have never understood the point of canned, chopped tomatoes. They rarely taste as good as their whole, peeled brethren, and they never break down fully while cooking, keeping their cube-like shape long after all other ingredients have turned to mush.

It's that magical time of year again, temperatures are once again climbing to levels most accurately described as "dangerous" and "oppressive". What a time to be alive.

Look. You're about to make a feeding trough of bread and probably put dip in it, so it's best you level with yourself. Look at the face on your head in the mirror and say "I'm going to make a double bread bowl now", to completely free yourself from every last bit of ego.

There’s soup, then there’s soup that seems to have the ability to heal the body and soul. What’s your trusted recipe for a bowl of magical recovery?

My love for corn has been well documented. I will eat it steamed. I will eat it creamed. I will strip the cobs of their golden, juicy kernels and eat them raw.

And, once I am left with nothing but naked cobs, I will use those corn sticks to make a corny broth.

A good chicken stock is more than chicken-flavored water. Though you should aim for your stock to be flavorful, a good one should also be rich and mouth-coating, with a body that just won't quit. This, my friends, is why you should make your stock with chicken feet.

Video: If you're a reader of Eating Trash With Claire the Lifehacker series where I convince you to transform your kitchen scraps into something edible and delicious - you should get excited, because it's now a video series. First up, I show you how to make a delicious, flavour-packed stock out of scraps, shells, and other "trash" that is actually treasure. Enjoy!

Cheap beer gets a bad rap, but I've been choosing it over the fancy stuff more and more these days. Unlike heavy IPAs, generic lagers don't compete with food or give me a hangover, and they're an absolute joy to cook with.

Vegetarian and vegan cooking should celebrate vegetables rather than forcing them into a meat-shaped box. I'll take "oh damn, I didn't know I liked eggplant" over "this is surprisingly tasty, but I'd rather eat real bacon" any day of the week.