7 Tips That Any Soup Turn into Super Food
Soup is the soul food. It is comforting, nutritional, and great to sip. A bowl full of soup can instantly lift your mood without lifting up your calorie intake. Whether you are on diet or wishing to have something filling, a bowl of soup may work! Soup is healthy and nutrient rich drink, which works as complete meal with right choice of ingredients. Those who love to have their bowl of comfort food on daily basis may now learn to add some extra health to make it a super food. Check the below given 7 tips that will turn your everyday soup into super food!
- Add healthy fat and only if required!
Cooking soup is a simple process that can be done with or without adding fat. Most of the soup recipes don’t call for sautéing ingredients, but there are some recipes where you will have to sauté onion or other spices. If you need to sauté onion, garlic, or other spices then do it with healthy fat. You can also put just few drops of oil and then add broth to cook these ingredients. Adding more fat to the soup would reduce its health quotient to great extent. Using healthy oil in low amount would keep your soup healthy and tasty.
- Keep the vegetable or chicken stock ready in order to serve multiple batches
Stock is one of the main ingredients in soup. It is used to adjust the consistency of soup. Soups contain different veggies, meat, chicken, and other pulpy solid stuff that add to its body. Stock is used to liquefy the soup. Many people use plain water instead of stock to adjust the consistency, but this way they are reducing the nutrition value of the soup. Vegetable or chicken stock is easy to prepare and can be prepared in big batches too. Properly stored stock would last for 4 days in refrigerator and for 3 to 4 months in freezer. Make sure that you refrigerate the stock within 2 hours of preparing it for longer shelf life.
- Use ingredients that retain their nutritional value even on heating
Cold soups are also becoming increasingly popular amongst people who want something soothing and cold, but the typical image that comes to your mind when you think of soup is piping hot liquid in a bowl. If you also love your soup hot then there is possibility that you lose many important components of soup during the heating process. Choosing your ingredients right means add only those ingredients to the soup that retain their nutritional value even on heating. Some such anti-oxidant rich veggies having similar or better nutritional value on heating are potatoes, tomatoes, carrots, mushrooms, spinach, asparagus, cabbage, broccoli, and red cabbage. Use these ingredients liberally in your soup to make it health packed.
- Add the extra dose of anti-oxidants
Anti-oxidants or phytonutrients present in food have good role to play in your health. Whenever you prepare soup, it is always recommended to add an extra shot of phytonutrients. Some of the phytonutrient rich veggies that are easy to blend in any soup are onion, garlic, ginger, turmeric, broccoli, sweet potatoes, and carrots. All these ingredients blend well in any hot or cold soup to add flavor and nutrition.
- Go slow on heating
In order to speed up the process of cooking, you would be tempted to increase the cooking temperature. Boiling the ingredients at high heat would not just reduce your cooking time but would also destroy the nutrients present in the soup. Most of the ingredients in soup may require cooking, however one can do it on low flame. Simmer the ingredients on low flame for longer time for perfect cooking without destroying the health factor.
- Don’t top it up with extra sodium
Salt gives taste to the food. Too much of salt also brings along sodium, which is dangerous for health. High sodium intake results in hypertension and many other health problems. In order to manage the sodium levels in your body, add only little salt to it. This way you will be able to enjoy natural flavors of the ingredients. If your soup doesn’t taste well because of low salt content then add pepper, herbs, lemon, and other such ingredients to lift the flavor even without too much of salt.
- Don’t experiment with health, experiment with healthy ingredients!
There is not fixed rule book to follow while preparing the soup. Everything healthy and flavorful would go into your soup. If you have something healthy but don’t have the recipe to use it then it’s time to be innovative! Experiment with healthy ingredients to get perfect broth. Remember that it is just an experiment and can sometimes fail too! So, prepare only small batches of innovation and if it is successful then note down the recipe for future reference.
Make any healthy soup healthier with good ingredients and cooking techniques as mentioned above.
Author Bio:
Karishma, an article writer by profession loves to experiment with different weight loss plans in order to stay fit in spite of busy routine. She has written a lot about health and fitness out of her experiences. Her articles on HCG Drops Shop are purely based on her knowledge pool about HCG drops garnered via extensive reading.
