Question:
My wife prepared a vegetable soup for me. However i am not sure what bracha to make? Please could you advise?
Answer:
Vegetable soup with vegetables is haadama and the bracha one recites on the vegetables also exempts the broth.If someone just wants to eat the broth and not the vegetables, many Ashkenazic poskim hold the bracha of the liquid is the same as the actual vegetable which in most cases is HaAdama.
The source to this topic comes from a Gemara in Brachos (39a) “Rav Papa says that water of cooked vegetables is HaAdama just like the Bracha of the cooked vegetables itself”.
The Rishonim deal with the question of why liquids which vegetables were cooked in are HaAdama while fruit juice is Shehakol. (1) The Rabbenu Yonah answers that squeezing fruit makes the fruit worse while cooking improves the vegetable. (2) The Rosh (Brachos 6:18) differentiates that fruit juices don’t taste like the fruit itself but the liquid of a cooked vegetable tastes like the vegetable itself and so it’s HaAdama. The Tur in 205:2 agrees with this . (3) The Rashba (Brachos 38a) writes that vegetables were mostly used for cooking (and so the bracha is HaAdama), however, the majority of fruit isn’t planted in order to be squeezed and so the bracha is Shehakol. (4) Rabbenu Yechiel and Mordechai explain that vegetables are different than fruits. Since vegetables are meant to be eaten its soup is also a food and is haadama like it, but fruit juice is a drink unlike the actual fruit and so it is shehakol. The Shulchan Aruch in siman 205:2 doesn’t clarify which answer and opinion he accords to but rather he simply writes that the bracha on vegetables soups is haadama.
The Rishonim also put different limitations on when this halacha applies. (1) The says that the water is only the same Bracha as the vegetable when one’s primary intent is to cook and eat the vegetables. But if you’re cooking the vegetables in the water for the purposes of the water like for someone who is sick and can’t eat solids, the bracha on the water is shehakol. (2) The Rambam (Brachos 8:4) holds that it must be that vegetables are usually cooked and one is cooking the vegetables in order to drink the liquid. Kesef Mishna explains that the Rambam only means to negate the case where the vegetables are cooked to remove a smell in the liquid, this ipiion is brought by the magen Avraham.
The conclusion is ; In sefer Vezot Habracha he writes that based on the above opinions there are several conditions to fulfill in order that the bracha be HaAdama: (A) It must be common to cook that vegetable (B) One’s intent is to cook the vegetables to eat them and not just the water (C) The water must have absorbed the flavor of the vegetable (D) Majority of that type of vegetable is cooked and not eaten raw .If one of these four conditions are lacking the bracha is shehakol. He brings the opinion of Rav Pinchas Sheinberg that condition D is necessary. Howeverthere are other poskim that hold that one only requires conditions A, B, and C.
Sephardim and some Ashkenazim hold that vegetable soup is Shehakol unless one also eats the vegetables. Carrot Soup
The bracha on carrot soup is haadama on the carrots and that exempts the carrots.But if there’s only a few vegetables in the soup and one really wants the soup and the vegetables are just there to enhance it the bracha on everything is shehakol.If one is only eating the broth of the carrot soup the bracha is shehakol. Bean soup is haadama. If someone just eats the broth and not the beans, according to Ashkenazim the bracha is haadama, according to Sephardim the bracha is shehakol. |