Personalized Keto Meal Plan at Your Fingertips

Slash Sodium by Making Your Own Soup


Learning to make soup is not difficult.  Try perusing through your recipe box, food magazines, or some of your cook books, and you are bound to come up with many ideas for making homemade soup. The beauty of homemade soup is that you can literally take any basic recipe and modify it based on ingredients you have on hand. You can make adjustments if you have specific nutritional requirements, such as lowering salt.

There are few food items you could ever prepare that are as economical as a soup. Most soups start with a stock, broth, or a vegetable base. To that you can add bits of meats, poultry or fish, vegetables, beans, lentils, or any combination of grains that you have on hand. Making a soup is a wonderful way to make good use of leftovers as well. Soups are suitable for just about any meal or snack. They freeze quite well, so here’s an opportunity for make-ahead meals.

If you have little time to cook, yet want to eat healthier try making a pot of soup on your day off. A good plan is to make one large pot of a different soup every week or so. Keep enough on hand for a couple of meals during the week. Freeze the rest in smaller containers, preferably 1-2 portion containers. If you make a different kind of soup each week, you will soon have a good selection in your freezer that you can choose from for a quick lunch or dinner meal. You can take your single serving of frozen soup to work with you and you have a nice healthful meal just by heating it up.

When you make your own soup, you will likely have a more nutritious product that is free of extra sodium or preservatives. Some commercial soups may be low in calories, but can have 1000 mg (or more) sodium per serving. Even many of the lower sodium varieties can have 450 mg. of sodium, and that can be too much if you need to watch your salt intake. When you make your own soup, you can control the amount of salt that goes into your soup without compromising flavor.

If you are really pressed for time, try using lower sodium broths as your base for making a great soup. Adding vegetables, beans, lentils or whole grains to soup adds plenty of vitamins minerals, and fiber. Stock or broth based soups are generally lower in calories, and based on what you add into the soup, you may be able to create something quite low in calories.

Soups provide a sense of fullness and can help with hunger control. People who regularly incorporate soup into their eating plan tend to eat fewer calories at the meal. Consider homemade soup for an afternoon snack or dinner appetizer. This could help you prevent overeating at the dinner meal.

There’s little that can go wrong when you make soup. Try using a slow cooker or just simmer on a low setting on your stove top; give it some time. The more you make soups and stocks, the more skilled and creative you become with the task. An investment of a little of your time can yield something satisfying, healthy and wonderful. Try some!


Source by Gretchen Scalpi

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