I was reading the description for a stainless-steel soup pot that said, “This pot is specially designed for soup, its tall 5” sides helping to minimize evaporation and maximize flavor." I’ve always thought the cooking surface area for sauteing a mirepoix important, but never considered that the height mattered as long as the pot was big enough to hold the ingredients. Is their statement true, and why?
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Yes, it’s true. Minimizing the surface:volume ratio does tend to minimize evaporation. That nice smell in the air is flavor leaving the pot. This is one reason pressure cookers make such flavorful stocks and soups.
Taller pots also make it easier to load more or fewer ingredients while keeping them all submerged. I think this also improves flavor.
Finally, taller pots generally have more consistent convection currents in liquid foods. These currents can also be more complex if the pot has conductive sidewalls.
The classic geometry for stockpots is sidewalls that are equal to or slightly taller than diameter.
But you can make soup in a skillet, too.
Very true… Many years ago, I had a friend that moved into a micro-studio apartment (it was all he could afford). It had a tiny fridge, a small kitchen sink, short countertop and nothing else (for a kitchen). I picked him up an electric (plug in) skillet (that was fairly deep), as a house warming gift. He did all of his cooking in that electric skillet (including making soup).
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I was planning on making stock today the same way I have for years, stovetop. For some reason, it never occurred to me to use my pressure cooker. This information may be life-changing.
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Yes, this is true on a theoretical level.
But in practice and in real life, any difference is negligible and you (as the ultimate eater) will notice no discernible differences.
This is literally one of those “ignoring the boulders to pick up pebbles” situations.
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just marketing. when you’re selling a stainless steel pot just like every other stainless steel pot on the market . . . one must revert to “the magic of marketing”
as for 'reducing (loss?) by evaporation: “the lid”
works every time for any soup you can think of . . .
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Five inches seems awfully short for a soup pot.
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Not just for a soup pot.
Oops. Did I just say that out loud?
I’m kidding, of course! The best soups can be made with 5 inch soup pots. It’s all about the technique 
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I never measured how deep my soup pot was… until today.
It’s 5 inches. I use this pot for making all manner of soups and stews. It is induction compatible, so I can dial back the heat for a gentle simmer.
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Most guys would claim theirs is at least 8".
(Time for @Amandarama to chime in with a pre-coffee offering)
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I don’t own a pressure cooker, have never used one but I’ve read they make your stocks cloudy.
Aw, it’s not about how big the soup pot is; it’s how you use it 
ETA - Which @linguafood may have beat me to already saying!
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And eventually the day will come when our soup pots become crepe skillets.
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If you’re using the PC to boil, absolutely. So don’t. Or try using a raft. And cloudy stock that tastes great… what, you’d throw it out?
There’s a really geeky article Dave Arnold wrote comparing stock making in Cook’s Issues. It’s notable because Dave reports a flavor difference between old-style PCs (which vent through the jiggler) and the newer style. According to Arnold, the new wins out because it holds in all the contents’ evaporate. Both beat stockpot-made.
Whatever you use, don’t boil (Tim aptly calls it a “smile”), and don’t agitate. If you want to dive deep with an ideal setup, find a 1:1 pot with a spigot and a good skimmer.
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There is a difference between soup making and stock making.
For stock making it really helps if your sides are tall, ideally as tall as the diameter of the pot, so a 1:1 ratio. It prevents evaporation, so your stock ingredients will be submerged for a longer time without the need to add water, and hence improving the flavour (or lessening the time to finish the stock).
For soup making a shorter than the diameter pot is easier to use, and gives a better flavour if you’re for example first sauteing some onions/celery and so on for the flavour base. Sauteing in a tall pot prevents proper browning (as there is less evaporation).
Most of my soup pots are by Fissler, the OP series. They have or used to have three different heights for pots one can buy, basically for different uses including the ones mentioned. The lowest is similar to a Le Creuset dutch oven in height, the middle one is a standard soup pot, and the tall one I use for stocks!
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I was just thinking this too. Was making stock with a mix of chicken carcasses and pork bones this weekend, and I definitely needed the taller pots to accommodate the bones that don’t allow your ingredients to sit uniformly flat at the bottom. I had to break out the bigger and taller pot when I do this.
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The term of a smile was learned in France.
And a great term it is!
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IMO, these are mostly non sequiturs.
Certainly a 1:1 pot is a little harder to reach into. But there’s no shortage of floorspace for sweating mirrepoix. I don’t brown mirrepoix, but I will occasionally char an onion half in a skillet before adding that to a stockpot.
For a dump soup of pre-prepared ingredients, I don’t think it matters much. But if the idea is to extract flavor from solid, bulkier ingredients (whether or not they stay in the soup), those ingredients ought to be immersed. I think a high-walled pot with a proportionately smaller footprint is best for that.
