• Tue. Dec 10th, 2024

Cioppino Soup – The Real San Francisco Treat

ByLucille Wood

Jul 21, 2019

Have you tried cioppino soup?
This hearty seafood-rich soup is a San Francisco original and tradition. Exactly when it was first created and how it came to be so popular is a hotly debated topic.
Cioppino (pronounced chop-EE-no) is one of those dishes you seldom see created today in the age of minimalism and using ingredients in their unaltered state. Most recipes include up to 25 or more ingredients including 5 to 7 different seafoods (shrimp, oysters, crab meat, halibut and scallops being common), carrots, tomatoes, fennel, leeks, green peppers, celery and white wine along with several herbs and spices. Cooking time is, as with most good seafood dishes, quite short, but there are many delicate steps.

Furthermore the seafood is often the leftovers from the catch that are pureed and passed through a sieve. This process, which retains much of the juice from the bones, skin and the connective tissues is said to give the soup its unique body and flavor.
For these reasons many San Francisco soup and seafood lovers visit one of the many excellent seafood restaurants around the bay and on the coast such as Tadich Grill to enjoy their chippino. Many excellent versions of the soup can be found including new “up-scale” versions with the best seafood left in recognizable piece in the flavorful broth.

One story about the origins of the soup is that in the 1850’s an Italian named Giusppe Bazzuro found an abandoned ship in the San Francisco Bay left behind by sailors who deserted it and went to prospect for gold in the Sierras and turned it into an Italian restaurant (it was definitely a simpler time.) He brought over the traditional Italian ciuppin soup and adapted it the the materials at hand – namely the abundant seafood – and the cioppino was born.Kuliner kota Malang