Tag Archives: soup

Meatball Soup

by recipes, soup, wwme,

I'm not one of those people who cooks the same recipe every time.  I prefer to tinker with my food.  Sometimes it's successful, sometimes it's not so great.  This delicious recipe came out of a combination of ingredients on hand in the fridge:  

  • chicken soup made from the bones of the roasted chicken two days ago
  • the outer leaves set aside from making fermented cabbage
  • the tops of celery
  • an onion
  • the leftover bits of sweet bell pepper

Needing to come up with something for dinner I decided that soup was the order of the day. Quick, easy and versatile soups are always a great way to use up leftovers for a delicious meal. It's like my own version of a kitchen chef contest, what-can-I-make-with-these-ingredients.  I

often joke that instead of the kitchen shows where the chef-contestants have access to a kitchen with every ingredient imaginable, there needs to be a cooking show where you have a refrigerator full of leftovers and a traditionally stocked pantry.

While I'm not sure what anyone else would have made with my ingredients on hand; this is what I came up with.  In this case a meatball soup seemed like a perfect dinner recipe to me.   It was a hit and this recipe will be making a regular appearance at our table.

Meatball Soup

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Ingredients
  

  • 1 medium onion, diced
  • 1 clove garlic, minced
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 1 cup of celery (mostly greens), diced
  • 8 large cabbage leaves, shredded
  • 1/2 sweet bell pepper, diced
  • 4 cups chicken broth
  • 2 cups water
  • meatballs (see recipe below)
  • 1 cup cooked rice
  • sea salt and fresh ground pepper to taste

Instructions
 

  • Heat olive oil in a large stock pot
  • Saute onion until just starting to wilt
  • Add garlic and saute one more minute
  • Add celery and cabbage greens and saute two minutes
  • Add bell pepper and saute one minute
  • Add broth and water
  • Bring to just under boiling then reduce to a simmer
  • Gently spoon meatballs into soup
  • Cook 20 minutes or until meatballs are done
  • Add rice, salt and pepper and serve

Meatballs

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Ingredients
  

  • 1 pound organic ground meat
  • 1 egg
  • 1 tablespoon dried onion
  • 1 tablespoon dried parsley
  • 1/2 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1/2 teaspoon salt

Instructions
 

  • Mix ingredients together and form into meatballs
  • Bake in 350F oven for 20 minutes or until cooked through

Learn the health benefits of soup plus get 15 delicious recipes to help you celebrate this wonderful food anytime.
split pea soup

The Health Benefits Of Soup

by health

Soup is a wonderful comfort food. There is just something special about a nice warm bowl of soup that can make us feel better.  Plus it turns out that soup is a great health food and has been nourishing the people of the world for literally thousands of years.

Soups have been around as long as man had the ability to cook in a pot - about 16,000 years. Combining various ingredients into a large pot to create nutritious, filling, easy to digest, and simple to serve meals has worked well for many different cultures and continues to do so.

Benefits of Soup

There are a number of health benefits when it comes to eating soup. Breaking them down by category we discover the following:

1. Quality of Diet

One study showed that those that eat more soup had an improved overall diet quality. Depending on the ingredients, soup can be a way to increase your intake of vitamins, minerals, and fiber intake – all of which are great for your health. This is also correlated to the potential for better weight management.

2. Hydration

Soup offers additional hydration due to the water, stock, or broth that is its base. For some people soup may be another option for improving your hydration.

3. Veggies

Eating the daily recommended amount of vegetables can sometimes be a challenge. Soup can be a good way to help support this need as it often contains veggies. It’s a great place to use those vegetables that might not be crisp enough to be eaten raw but will work great in a soup. Adding slightly past prime but still edible veggies to your soup is also a way to avoid food waste.

4. Satiety

Keeping your body satisfied with a “full” feeling can go a long way toward reducing mindless, bored snacking.  You can improve that feeling of fullness, called satiety, when you add soup to your menu. Studies have that consuming soups can lead to a reduction of hunger pangs and an increase of a feeling of fullness. Soups were found to be helpful because for many soups the ingredients in them often require chewing which helps with satiety. This may account for lower body weight among people who consume soup. It is often served early in a meal because it can stimulate your gastrointestinal response – it gets your system ready to digest your food.

5. Nourishing Bump

Soup is wonderful in an of itself, however it also presents an opportunity to get more nutritional density in your diet. By using bone broth instead of water you add even more nutrients to the soup. This is because bone broth can add additional amino acids which are used to make proteins. The amino acids have a wide range of  benefits, they can:

  • help break down your food
  • grow and repair tissue
  • make hormones
  • support brain chemicals
  • build muscle
  • boost your immune system
  • and maintain healthy skin, hair, and nails.

When using bone broth instead of water it provides collagen, the primary substance which makes up connective tissue in your body. Collagen provides structure, strength, and support, and also used to repair tissues such as bone, tendons, ligaments, and skin.

What about chicken soup?

Chicken soup is what you typically think about when you’re feeling under the weather. Some people even refer to chicken soup as Nana’s Penicillin. As it turns out there’s a good reason for that.

Studies have shown that chicken soup may help clear nasal congestion and alleviate other cold symptoms. Plus it’s mostly liquid so it’s helping with hydration which is important when you’re under the weather. 

Chicken soup is also high in tryptophan may help support that feeling of “comfort”. The veggies can add vitamins along with other antioxidants and minerals all of which help to build your immune system and reduce inflammation.

Now you can see why many cultures have used soups to nourish themselves and their families for so long. There are soups for every season served hot, cold, thick or thin – the possibilities are endless. Soup recipes are also extremely flexible allowing for a tremendous amount of creativity. Enjoy a wonderful bowl of soup knowing you are investing in your health.

Sources

  • Deshmukh SN, Dive AM, Moharil R, Munde P. Enigmatic insight into collagen. J Oral Maxillofac Pathol. 2016 May-Aug;20(2):276-83. doi: 10.4103/0973-029X.185932. PMID: 27601823; PMCID: PMC4989561.
  • Mattes R. Soup and satiety. Physiol Behav. 2005 Jan 17;83(5):739-47. doi: 10.1016/j.physbeh.2004.09.021. Epub 2004 Nov 11. PMID: 15639159.
  • Rennard BO, Ertl RF, Gossman GL, Robbins RA, Rennard SI. Chicken soup inhibits neutrophil chemotaxis in vitro. Chest. 2000 Oct;118(4):1150-7. doi: 10.1378/chest.118.4.1150. PMID: 11035691.
  • Zhu Y, Hollis JH. Soup consumption is associated with a lower dietary energy density and a better diet quality in US adults. Br J Nutr. 2014 Apr 28;111(8):1474-80. doi: 10.1017/S0007114513003954. Epub 2014 Jan 2. PMID: 24382211.

Healthy & Hearty Soup Recipes

Learn the health benefits of soup plus get 15 delicious recipes to help you celebrate this wonderful food anytime.

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split pea soup

Instant Pot Split Pea Soup

by crockpot, Fall, food storage, Instant Pot, winter,

The recipe is originally from my book The Pantry Principle.  Back then it was designed for a slow cooker.  Now that we have Instant Pots the recipe has been modified.

This is a delicious way to utilize split peas from your food storage.  If necessary this recipe can be modified to also used dried vegetables from your storage however this will require the addition of extra liquid.  See the parenthetical notes in the recipe for food storage modifications.

The addition of the dulse, an edible seaweed found in the North Atlantic, to this recipe adds a wonderful flavor and a big boost of iodine and the other trace elements our bodies need. If you want to make this as a vegetarian dish simply substitute vegetable broth or water for the bone broth.

Making this soup in the Instant Pot is a great way to have a quick hot meal ready to eat after a long day.

split pea soup

Instant Pot Split Pea Soup

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Servings 6

Ingredients
  

  • 2 carrots, diced (1 cup dehydrated carrot slices)
  • 2 ribs celery, diced (1/3 cup dehydrated celery)
  • 1 onion, diced (1/3 cup dried onion)
  • 1 pound dried split peas, picked over and washed
  • 2 tablespoons olive oil
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 1 tablespoon fresh thyme
  • 6 cups bone broth 
  • 1 teaspoon sea salt
  • ¼ teaspoon fresh ground pepper
  • 2 tablespoons dulse (a type of seaweed), crumbled

Instructions
 

  • Place all ingredients except salt, pepper, and dulse in an Instant Pot. Stir well to combine. 
  • IP Cook Time 15 minutes  Natural Release approximately 15 minutes.
  • Slow Cooker Time - 8 hours on low
  • Remove bay leaf
  • Add salt and pepper
  • Blend together with an immersion blender
  • Ladle into bowls to serve and top with 1 teaspoon crumbled dulse

Don’t Do This: Dehydrating Bone Broth

by preserving, soup, ,
 
I’m a big fan of sharing mistakes. Especially the ones I make that are related to food. We all make mistakes, it’s part of being human. I’m sharing in the hopes you will learn from my experience and not make the same mistake.  
 
I may have mentioned over the last few weeks that I’ve become reacquainted with my dehydrator.  I’m re-learning how to store food this way plus making some delicious snacks. But not everything comes out the way I think it will. 
 
In the manner of the book Make The Bread Buy The Butter I’d like to share something that I don’t think you should do. I mean you can, it’s possible, I just don’t recommend it.
 
I’ll start by telling you the what...I don’t think it’s worth it to dehydrate bone broth.
 

Here’s the Why

 
Sometimes my curiosity and meandering mind runs away with my brain. My general thought process went something like this...
 
  • We’ve had a couple of power outages already this year.  Now it’s hurricane season.  There might be another power outage
  • What if I want bone broth? After all, I drink 1-2 cups a day!
  • Hmmm...I’ve been dehydrating so many things I bet you can dehydrate bone broth.  
  • This would be so much less expensive than buying it already dehydrated. Plus I’d have my bone broth which I like a lot
::Internet search on dehydrating liquids:: Yup! It’s possible
 

How to Dehydrate Bone Broth

I wasn’t sure how much bone broth I was going to dehydrate but I imagined a LOT.  I figured I’d start with my usual 1 gallon batch. At this point it’s important for you to know that when you are dehydrating foods you cannot have a lot of fat in the mixture.  Fat does not dehydrate. If there’s too much it will go rancid. So, moving forward with my big plan…
 
  1. Make one gallon of bone broth (I almost always have a “broth bag” going in my freezer)
  2. After straining, chill the broth to make the fat rise to the top and skim it off 
  3. Carefully ladle 1 cup of broth at a time onto the fruit leather/liquid trays (this was so I would know what the ratio was -- 1 cup of broth equals how much dehydrated broth?). Please note I was mindful enough to ladle it all next to the dehydrator instead of carrying loaded trays across the kitchen and possibly slopping bone broth all over the floor. I give myself brownie points for that.
  4. Turn on the dehydrator and run until the broth is done (your mileage may vary depending on your dehydrator)
  5. Take the trays of dehydrated bone broth to the counter to scrape it off and into a jar
 

The End Result

This, dear reader, is where the fun began.  First of all, dehydrated bone broth does not easily part with the tray on which it has been sitting for 10-12-14 hours. No indeedy, it chips off slowly and laboriously. 
 
Second, it turns out dehydrated bone broth is sticky. Yup. As in I wound up wearing a fair amount of it.  It would chip off the tray and somehow bits of it would magnetically attach themselves to me. 
 
Hours later (not really but it felt like it) I finally had my bone broth. It was completely dehydrated, flaked up, and safely ensconced in a jar. Where a quick measurement indicated that approximately 1 tablespoon of dehydrated broth flakes was the equivalent of one cup of liquid broth. I’m also pretty sure I licked more than a cup’s worth off my hands when I was done.
 
Between the hours it took to make the broth, the hours it took to dehydrate it, and the time wrestling…um...chipping the stuff off the trays I’m not sure how many hours it was but it was too many.  I make bone broth on a regular basis and will continue to do so. I do tend to store some in my freezer but given that I have other items in there there’s not a lot of room for more bone broth. 
 
So my advice is to make the bone broth, maybe even store some in the freezer, and buy the dehydrated bone broth for longer term storage.

Holiday Recipe: Mockstroni Soup

by recipes, , ,

There’s nothing more comforting than a nourishing bowl of soup after being out in the winter cold. This recipe utilizes an instant pot or a slow cooker, so you can easily come home to an easy-to-prepare soup to warm you up. 

This hearty soup is gluten-free and features that classic minestrone combination of herbs, beans, and vegetables. Because it's not your classical minestrone, I decided to change the name and call it “mockstroni.”

The traditional way to make this soup was to use whatever was in season, so feel free to use whatever vegetables you have on hand. Fresh herbs are always best, but in the wintertime, dry herbs are fine. And if you want to make a vegetarian version, you can simply use vegetable broth instead of bone broth.

Looking for more recipes? Have a look at my Healthy Holiday Recipes and choose which soup you’ll be ladling up! 

Note: Get 10% off on my Healthy Holiday Recipes + FREE Holiday Leftover Plan when you buy before the launch on December 18!

Enjoy cooking and have a healthy holiday season!