Warming & Satisfying Soup

What’s better in the heart of winter than a nice hearty bowl of soup? It’s warming, calming, relatively inexpensive, and contributes to our daily intake of water! Even better, soups tend to help satisfy hunger and make you feel full more quickly. Trying to lose weight? Try starting with a bowl of soup and see how much less food you need to eat to feel physically satisfied.

As mentioned in the previous article, eating heavy meals at night can disrupt a good night’s sleep. Soup, is generally easy to digest and is full of essential nutrients, which makes it a great choice for dinner or when recuperating from being sick. We have all heard about the healing powers of chicken soup; mineral-rich bone broths have played an integral role in the cuisines of all traditional cultures for centuries. Studies have shown that consumption of miso soup can help cut the risk of certain cancers. Any soup you choose, unless it’s cheddar bacon twinkie soup, will no doubt be nice to your body.

Making homemade soup can take a lot less time than you would think and it’s one of the most simple and flexible things you can cook. Try one of my favorite recipes below or improvise your own soup with help from these simple steps from my trusty Mark Bittman cookbook:

1. Start with a little fat and a lot of flavor. Sauté one or two aromatic vegetables, like garlic, ginger, onions, or shallots, in a little olive oil or butter.
2. Add seasonings. This can be as basic as salt in pepper or as complex as dried herbs and spices or as simple as a dried bay leaf. Lightly heat until you can smell their fragrance. Note: add fresh herbs at the end of cooking for most impact.
3. Stir in the liquid. Add stock, water, wine, a combination of these or anything that best compliments the other ingredients.
4. Add main ingredients in order of longest cooking time to shortest cooking time. Example: dried beans or uncooked grains, then tomatoes, then spinach; or first mushrooms, then carrots, then kale, then cooked noodles. Add cooked leftovers at the very end.
5. Continue to taste as you go along and adjust the seasonings as you go. Relax. As Bittman says “It’s only soup.”