Healthy Home Made Soup

Soups really “hit the spot” in cold winter days, however, they could be a great healthy meal or a snack in any season.

They are a great way to pack in more nutrition especially if your children are like mine – have a limited vegetable menu. Soups are a great way to disguise all those veg that they normally would not touch.

So, I am very lucky my boys love home made soups.

Home made soups are a much healthier option compared to canned soups that are usually high in sodium and some in sugar too, like tomato soup, as well as a chemical BPA. They are easy to make and cheaper too than store-bought ones. So, win on all counts.

I usually alternate between either a vegetable soup or a chicken bone broth soup.

Bone broth in particular has been found to have incredible benefits on our health:

  • It contains all nutrients and minerals found in bones and tendons
  • The gelatin in bone broth protects and heals the mucosal lining of the digestive tract and helps aid in the digestion of nutrients
  • It helps you fight inflammation thanks to the anti-inflammatory amino acids present
  • The calcium, magnesium and phosphorus in bone broth helps our bones to grow and repair
  • Helps with skin, hair and nail health thanks to the collagen and gelatin
  • The glucosamine in bone broth can stimulate the growth of new collagen, repair damaged joints and reduce pain
  • A published study shows eating chicken soup during a respiratory infection, such as colds and flu, helps reduce the number of white blood cells, which are the cells that cause flu and cold symptoms.

Chicken Bone Broth Soup Ingredients:

  • 2 organic whole legs of chicken
  • 4 -6 stalks of celery, finely chopped
  • 1 whole onion, finely chopped
  • 2 whole carrots, chopped
  • 1 whole parsnip, chopped
  • 1 Tablespoon chopped fresh parsley to garnish
  • ½ teaspoon sea salt or teaspoon of bouillon,
  • water

Directions: Place all of the above ingredients in a pan and cook on low heat for 1-2 hours. Even better would be to use a slow cooker for longer as slow cooking preserves the nutrients.

Because of the children, I like to whizz up vegetables in a blender, but if you would prefer a clear soup, leave vegetables as thy are. Then fine chop chicken pieces and then put them all back together.

Vegetable Soup Ingredients

(whatever I have in the fridge, but I recommend the following, all chopped):

  • 1 whole broccoli
  • 4 carrots
  • 2 parsnips
  • 1/2 squash
  • 1 medium sweet potato
  • whole celery
  • 2 courgettes
  • 2 small or 1 large onion
  • 1/2 teaspoon of salt or bouillon
  • water and tablespoon of olive oil

Directions: Place all of the above ingredients in a pan and cook on low heat for 30 minutes. It is pretty much ready to be served. The above would give around 8 servings of soups, so, for us as a family – we have 2 days worth of soup.

I would perhaps grill some chicken to eat with a bowl of soup for a balanced meal. I also blend all the ingredients for a creamy texture for boys and add a dollop of drained low-fat yoghurt, like Liberte’, also to up the protein.

In any case, it is a delicious winter warmer or a whole year round snack or a meal.

Soups are the easiest to make and, if you are not into soups, I hope this inspires you to give them a try. There are so many fancy recipes out there where you can use so many different ingredients and spices, but these two I grew up with, they are basic and, for someone who has two fussy eaters at home, these are good enough to help with their nutrient and fibre intake.

Gourmet Tomato Soup

Then, on days when I do not feel like cooking a soup or do not have, we always have Herbalife Nutrition’s Gourmet Tomato Soup that we can whizz up in under 1 minute.

It is low sugar and salt and high in protein and fibre, way better alternative to canned tomato soups. All the good stuff and my husband, my younger son and myself are true lovers.

And feel free to add ingredients to it such as coriander or spinach, sometimes mushrooms or sprinkle with Parmesan cheese (or all of it, because I am greedy!)

Bon Appetite!

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.

You may use these <abbr title="HyperText Markup Language">HTML</abbr> tags and attributes: <a href="" title=""> <abbr title=""> <acronym title=""> <b> <blockquote cite=""> <cite> <code> <del datetime=""> <em> <i> <q cite=""> <s> <strike> <strong>

*

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.