Clear soup is any soup built on a transparent, unclouded broth rather than a cream, purée, or thickened base. The three main types are broth, bouillon, and consommé, and they all share one defining trait: you can see through the liquid. This distinction matters in the kitchen, where clear soups form their own culinary category, and in medical settings, where “clear liquids” have a specific meaning before procedures like colonoscopies or surgery.
The Three Core Types of Clear Soup
All clear soups start with stock, a flavorful liquid made by slowly simmering bones, aromatic vegetables like carrots, celery, and onions, and herbs over low heat for an extended period. From that foundation, clear soups branch into three forms.
Broth is the most common. It’s a clear, watery soup made from clarified stock with no thickening agents. Chicken broth, beef broth, and vegetable broth all qualify. Broth can be served on its own or used as the base for soups with added ingredients, like chicken noodle or beef vegetable.
Bouillon is essentially concentrated broth. You’ll often encounter it as cubes or granules dissolved in hot water. It delivers a similar flavor in a more compact, shelf-stable form. A standard cup of bouillon contains roughly 21 calories but packs nearly 1,500 milligrams of sodium, so it’s light on energy but heavy on salt.
Consommé is the most refined version. It’s a rich broth that has been further clarified (typically by simmering with egg whites, which trap impurities) until it’s perfectly transparent and deeply flavored. Consommé is served with no other ingredients, and in classic French cooking it’s considered a technique that showcases a chef’s skill.
What Makes a Soup “Clear” vs. Cloudy
Clarity in soup is about what’s suspended in the liquid. When fat and protein are agitated by a hard, rolling boil, they break into tiny particles that scatter light and turn the broth opaque or milky white. Research on chicken stock shows that boiling causes fat to break into smaller and smaller globules that emulsify with dissolved proteins, creating that thick, white appearance. The longer and harder you boil, the cloudier it gets.
To keep soup clear, the stock needs to simmer gently rather than boil. Skimming foam and fat from the surface as it cooks also helps. Starchy ingredients like potatoes or flour-based thickeners will cloud a broth, as will blending in cream, coconut milk, or puréed vegetables. If any of those elements are present, the soup crosses into the “thick soup” category, which includes cream soups, bisques, chowders, and purées.
Clear Soups Around the World
Clear soups aren’t limited to Western cooking. Many of the world’s most celebrated soups are built on delicate, transparent broths.
In Japanese cuisine, osuimono is a traditional clear soup that highlights a single ingredient, usually seafood. A classic version uses clams poached gently in water with kombu (dried kelp) and sake, then seasoned with a small amount of light soy sauce. The broth is deliberately minimal: a few mushrooms and sliced scallions float in it, but the point is the clarity and clean umami flavor of the liquid itself. Overloading the bowl with ingredients or seasoning goes against the spirit of the dish.
Vietnamese pho, while it contains noodles and garnishes, is built on a clear beef or chicken broth simmered for hours with charred ginger, star anise, and cinnamon. Chinese hot and sour soup, by contrast, is thickened with starch, so it would not qualify as a clear soup despite being broth-based. The dividing line is always whether the liquid itself remains transparent and unthickened.
Vegetables and Aromatics That Work Best
Building flavor in a clear soup without muddying the broth requires choosing your ingredients carefully. Yellow onions, celery stalks, carrots, and French beans are common base vegetables for the stock. Ginger and garlic add depth when sautéed briefly before the broth is added. Mushrooms, bok choy, broccoli, cauliflower, and sweet corn can all go into the finished soup as additions.
A few things to watch for: red onions change the flavor profile and can tint the broth. Too much cabbage leaves an off-putting, sulfurous taste. Fresh herbs like coriander and celery leaves work well, but they should be added toward the end of cooking to keep their flavor bright. Finishing with a squeeze of fresh lemon juice, a pinch of pepper, or chili flakes gives the soup some edge without compromising its clarity.
Clear Soup on a Medical Clear Liquid Diet
If you’ve been told to follow a clear liquid diet before a medical procedure, “clear soup” has a narrower meaning. The National Institutes of Health specifies that broth, bouillon, and consommé are acceptable clear liquids. The key rule is that the soup must be free of solid pieces, fat globules, and anything opaque.
Miso soup does not qualify as a clear liquid in this context, even though it’s broth-like. The fermented soybean paste creates a cloudy suspension with fine sediment. Similarly, cream-based soups, tomato soup, and any broth with noodles, rice, or vegetable pieces would be excluded. For certain tests like colonoscopy, you may also be asked to avoid any liquids with red or purple coloring, since these can be mistaken for blood during the procedure. Stick with plain, strained broth if you’re prepping for a medical test.
Storing Clear Soup Safely
Homemade clear broth is perishable. According to FDA guidelines, broth and meat-based gravies last only one to two days in the refrigerator. If you want to keep it longer, freeze it. Frozen broth stays safe for two to three months, though quality gradually declines after that. Letting the broth cool to room temperature before refrigerating, and storing it in airtight containers, helps preserve both flavor and safety. Portioning broth into ice cube trays or small containers before freezing makes it easy to thaw only what you need.