When it’s chilly at night, the daylight hours are still too short and you need something to warm the soul, no meal makes an evening instantly cozy better than a hearty soup or stew. These five recipes are designed for weeknights when you don’t have hours to simmer a stock; some can be made in less than an hour, while others can be prepped on a Sunday and saved for the week ahead. As starters or main courses, they also make easy entertaining hacks for hosting guests without fuss while allowing you to chat. Each of these delicious bowls of comfort is paired with high-scoring, great-value wines to make the meal a bit more special.
Italian Beef Stew with Red Wine
This recipe for Stracotto di Manzo, a Jewish-Italian beef stew, appears in food writer Leah Koenig’s latest book, Portico: Cooking and Feasting in Rome’s Jewish Kitchen. She encountered the dish on a trip to a historically Jewish neighborhood in Rome, where it was made for her by kosher caterer Giovanni Terracina, and felt it was the quintessential representation of Roman-Jewish cuisine. While it may seem decadent, the recipe is deceptively easy, with only seven ingredients. The keys are adding a cup of dry red wine and cooking the beef low and slow to get tender meat and plenty of velvety sauce.
As it can be used for both a first and second course, this recipe is perfect for any of the major holidays and it’s versatile with a range of dry red wines; just use the same wine in the stew as what you’re going to serve at the table. Our Seasonal Entertaining feature recommended 10 kosher wine pairings, from a Rhône-style blend from Israel, Yatir Creek Judean Hills 2018 (90 points, $60), to a South African Merlot, the Backsberg Merlot Paarl Kosher 2019 (87, $19). However, if you want to choose an Italian wine, many value bottlings from around the country would also fit the bill; some great options would be a Chianti Classico or a Barbera d’Asti.
Weeknight Chili and a Rioja Red
Smoky, spicy and dead easy, this chili recipe relies on pantry staples and foolproof shortcuts to carry you after a long day. From our 8 & $20 collection of recipes that keep ingredients to a minimum and pair with value-priced wines, this TexMex mix of beans and beef packs in extra flavor with fire-roasted tomatoes and chipotles in adobo sauce, allowing you to make it in under an hour. This timeless stew can be topped with sliced avocado, shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream or crushed tortilla chips for an added crunch. Our recommendation? All of the above.
This easy chili would be a great match with a Spanish red, particularly a Tempranillo-dominant blend from Rioja such as a recently released vintage of Bodegas Montecillo Rioja Reserva. This wine’s red and black fruit flavors and citrusy acidity complement the savoriness of this hearty dish. Since chili is well suited for leftovers, and since the Montecillo Reserva is such a good value, you might even want to grab two bottles instead of one.
Zesty Chicken Soup with a Fruity Burgundy
Another example of a dish in which thoughtfully chosen seasonings transform an old favorite into something new, this chicken soup recipe is elevated with the addition of ginger, turmeric and freshly squeezed lemon. Using boneless chicken thighs speeds up the cooking process, and swapping orzo in for the noodles makes the soup a bit easier to eat. With ginger and turmeric’s anti-inflammatory properties and other benefits, this soup is exactly what the doctor ordered if you’re feeling under the weather, or if you’re just longing for warmer nights.
Another great way to make this soup a successful main is by pairing it with a fruity, light-bodied red Burgundy, such as a recent vintage of the Bouchard Père & Fils Bourgogne Réserve, a great value from this pricey region. While the citrus and herb notes of the dish might have you leaning towards a white wine, the red fruit and mineral notes in Burgundy Pinot Noirs balance the savory chicken, while their spice, earthy notes and acidity play well with the ginger, turmeric and lemon in the soup.
Spicy Tomato Soup with a Côte du Rhône
An age-old friend to the weeknight rotation, tomato soup can easily be made more special with the addition of a few well-chosen ingredients. In this recipe, roasted fresh tomatoes, red pepper flakes and a basil-and-sour-cream topping turn comfort food into a guest-worthy dish, but this soup stays simple enough to make any day of the week. While this can stand firmly on its own as a main course, tomato soup is always great with grilled cheese, as well as a croque madame or an Alsatian tarte flambée if you’re looking for an easy entertaining hack.
The spice in this soup calls for a red wine that’s relatively light on tannins and has enough acidity to stand up to the tomatoes, such as a blend of Grenache and Syrah from southern France’s Côte du Rhône appellation. These wines offer bright red fruit flavors, along with hints of white pepper, spice and herbs that will further enhance the herbal sweetness of the soup. Famille Perrin’s Côte du Rhône-Villages is a reliably good value bottling year after year; a great alternative would be recent vintages of the Aimé Sabon Côtes du Rhône St.-Antonin.
Mardi Gras-Worthy Gumbo with Washington Pinot Gris
Whether you want to cook up this Southern staple for a celebration or just to warm up a regular weeknight, it can be hard to choose from all the gumbo recipes out there. We turned to this delicious version from Kelly Franz (who was at the time executive chef at Award of Excellence–winning Magnolias in Charleston, S.C.), as it feels extra-special without having to dedicate a whole afternoon to it. Franz’s recipe—made with duck confit and andouille sausage—combines many regional traditions: a New Orleans–inspired roux, Charleston’s tomatoes and the gumbo necessities okra and filé. Two main components of the stew–the roux and the duck confit–can be made a couple days in advance, bringing the final stage of cooking down to under an hour. Gumbo gets better with age, and this one can be made up to five days ahead of serving.
For a meaty gumbo, while you might lean to a light-bodied red, such as a Mencía from the Bierzo region in northeastern Spain, Magnolias beverage director Bill Netherland recommends a more unconventional option: Washington Pinot Gris. “The spice of the gumbo, I feel, needs the ripeness and perhaps a little residual sugar of Pinot Gris,” he explained. Some lovely examples that would work here would be Archery Summit Pinot Gris Willamette Valley Vireton 2022 (90 points, $24), or Soléna Pinot Gris Willamette Valley 2021 (90, $22) or 2022 (89, $24).
