Right here’s Why You Want a Soup Mug

For the extraordinarily on-line amongst us, it’s been practically not possible to overlook the rise of soup as the most recent embodiment of our collective want for consolation. It arguably started in late 2021 with the “soup woman” phenomenon, which gave us viral TikTok audios like “beautiful, beautiful ladies love soup” and “good soup.” Extra not too long ago, the New York Occasions meals tradition reporter Kim Severson used her annual development predictions to crown soup as 2024’s “dish of the yr,” calling it “bone broth’s extra fascinating youthful sibling and the proper car for cross-cultural mash-ups.” Soup even got here out on prime within the Nationwide Restaurant Affiliation’s annual What’s Sizzling Culinary Forecast, which pegged soup as each a “social media sensation” and the “final consolation meals.”

However if you wish to maximize your soup consumption this yr, you actually need a soup mug.

Once I’m consuming soup at house, it feels counterintuitive to sip it daintily from a low-lipped, ecru porcelain bowl, spoon raised to the lips the best way Emily Put up instructed. It likewise feels nearly disrespectful to relegate it to the identical day-in, day-out bowls that maintain every thing from raisin bran to triple-scoop butter pecan ice cream. That is soup, dangit — it’s virtually medicinal in its therapeutic properties, each bodily and psychological. You wouldn’t dollop caviar with a steel spoon or pour an IPA right into a champagne flute, so why shouldn’t soup be granted the dignity of its personal devoted vessel?

With their chunky form and suffer-no-fools visible heft, soup mugs are hearty vessels harking back to the mid-Twentieth-century, an period when America’s consolation meals was unabashedly unsexy and had cookware to match (suppose: aspic needs and ). With a large backside for stability, a taper across the rim to carry in warmth, a deal with that permits for portability, and a quantity that screams “full meal” and never a starter course, a soup mug takes soup critically. Consuming it from an everyday bowl feels shallow and unsatisfying by comparability.

Due to the ingenuity of the soup mug’s deal with — some variations of which even characteristic a small resting place on your thumb — you’ll be able to go cell along with your mug for a cold front-porch souping session. Want to achieve the ultimate bits of carrot and potato on the backside? Merely tip the mug and slurp every thing down — it’s been completely engineered so that you can get each final scrap of warming goodness, no awkward spoon clanking required. A transportable soup mug and thermos combo is right for outside adventures, primed for full-belly heat by the campfire and toting alongside, spill-free, whereas birdwatching. (It beats a flimsy ham sandwich and bag of chips by an extended shot.)

There’s additionally a soup mug fashion for each character. If you happen to’re feeling , look no additional than or for soup mugs with kitsch. (Some even have !) Childhood nostalgia can play a task in soup mug design, so in the event you’re aiming to reconnect along with your elementary college years, go for a or compact . soup mugs abound, and throughout the nation concentrate on these homey items of crockery: a few of my favorites are made by Salvaterra Pottery in Weaverville, North Carolina.

So, go forward: splash, slurp, and scoop up some extra. Soup isn’t a meal meant for daintiness or taking a tough line about manners. It’s all about consolation, and the standard, stocky soup mug is the emotional help vessel you want.

Sarah Baird is a Kentucky-based journalist and writer whose work seems often within the New York Occasions, GQ, Saveur, the Believer and past. A 2019 Knight Visiting Nieman Fellow at Harvard College, she writes ceaselessly about cultural points impacting rural America.