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Why I Make My Own Soup
By Christina Mulberry
I love to make homemade soups. To me they have bold flavors, are hearty, and seem to be a healthy food choice. On the other hand, many of my friends are perfectly satisfied with canned soups and can't imagine why I would labor for 20 minutes or more to make mine from scratch. Although I feel that any type of soup is often a good meal choice, homemade soups seem to offer some distinct advantages: -- Flavor
To me the flavors of a homemade soup are more bold and distinct. Canned soups seem to have a fairly uniform flavor. It seems as though, after sitting in a can for weeks, or even longer, all of the ingredients meld and there is a single taste that runs throughout the soup. -- Texture
With homemade soups I can get textures that I don't find with most canned soups. It seems to me that a canned soup leaves most vegetables very soft, noodles mushy, and so forth. I guess I like to be able to feel my food. -- Nutrition
The canning process does remove some of the nutrients from food, but of course the cooking process at home can do this as well, especially for foods that are boiled or cooked for long periods of time. However I feel there are other nutrition benefits that can be gained by cooking your own soup at home. I certainly add very little, if any salt to my soups, whereas the sodium content in many canned soups is very high. Even the low sodium brand my husband sometimes uses has 17% of the sodium RDA per serving. In addition, there are a number of artificial additives in canned soups that I would rather avoid. I certainly don't know that all of these additives for color, preservation, and flavor are bad for you necessarily, but if I don't know for sure, I'm happy to avoid them when possible. Aside from the nutritional value of the foods I add to my soups, I also find that the soups I make at home have a greater volume of the nutritious vegetables that I want. Many canned soups that I've tried may include carrots or peas for instance. However, I may only find six or seven peas in the entire can. On the other hand, I may find that many peas in two bites of my own soup. To make your homemade soups as nutritious as possible, it's best to use fresh produce purchased locally which is in season. Afterall, the longer produce has been around, the more nutrients it loses. Cutting produce immediately before cooking, and keeping the sizes a bit larger will also help retain nutrients. Of course taking care not to over cook and to consume soup soon after preparation is also best. Soup that sits in the refrigerator for a few days will also lose nutrients. Canned and frozen produce can be nutritious as well, especially when you're using items that are not currently in season, so I see no reason to avoid these when fresh produce is not an option. Even with some canned or frozen ingredients, homemade soups still appear to hold some advantages over canned soups. |
Homemade Chicken Vegetable Soup Recipe
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I also make my own soups. I love soup, but I find the canned varieties and mixes to be costly and not as good as what I make at home. This morning I made split pea soup using a soup stock left over from cooking corned beef in the slow cooker. It was an experiment, but it worked. The corned beef liquid made an excellent soup stock.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Sounds tasty!
I make my own soup too, and cannot imagine why anyone would eat the over-salted canned stuff, although it is convenient in casseroles...in limited quantity. Most of my home made soup is cooked in the pressure cooker, so it doesn't take long at all to make it.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Pressure cookers are great. They cook fast and leave the nutrients in. I use mine frequently.
Sounds good. I will have to try that out!
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
It's a healthy and tasty choice if you decide to make your own. Thanks for stopping by.
Thank you for sharing the valued points of homemade soup,
Christina. Just the improvement of less salt is a great step to better health. My wife made a beef stew in the slow cooker last week, out of this world!!
Best wishes.
Frederick
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Stews are great in the slower cooker. Hubby loves my beef stew and I have a chicken stew that I like best.
Yeah. It's the salt that's the issue. Even trying your own soups using stock -- the stock is often very salty. So are bouillon cubes. The low-sodium ones have no taste.
20 minutes? Gee, I WISH I could do it in 20 minutes. That's why I still gravitate back to box soups. It's just easier...
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Well, 15 to 20 minutes for prep. not the time it takes to let it cook. Many of the soups use just water the meat was cooked in or stock I made previously so that speeds it up.
Homemade soups... each time I make split pea and ham soup I am back in mom's kitchen as a little kid with the smells of fresh baked bread, laughter and lots of butter. Comfort food. It was all so good and was burned off with a hard, fast game of tag! Would that life were still so easy! Still, the homemade soups have survived that growing up and I make them because they are still the best comfort food for a cold spring night!
Hi Mulberry,
cooking home made soups without salt may save your life. They gave me such soups in hospital. You had to fill them up with chunks of dry bread to be able to get them down. However, there is a way to season soups made at home without salt. I am working on it and will keep all of you posted, eventually.
CONTRIBUTOR'S REPLY
Looking forward to hearing more about this!
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This intel was contributed by mulberry
mulberry
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May, 2012
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