Soup’s On!

Simplicity, ease, and deep, wholesome nourishment make soups a foolproof win for cold winter nights

Even beginner cooks can simmer together a pot of warm, nourishing soup with ease. (Nitr/Shutterstock)

When the winter chill hits the air, soup is in order. While you could buy a few cans at the grocery store, nothing quite beats the nutrition, flavor, and affordability of homemade. When you’re tired at the end of the day, you can still toss a few vegetables and aromatics into a pot with plenty of broth and have dinner done and ready faster than ordering takeout.

The Ultimate Thrifty Meal

With the ever-increasing cost of food, cutting corners without cutting quality is essential. Soup is a surefire win on this account, as it’s an easy way to make a wholesome and thrifty meal. Toss the odds and ends left over at the end of the week into your pot, simmer them in broth or water, and enjoy a meal that feels practically free. Soup has the magical ability to turn humble ingredients, such as tough cuts of meat or beans and root vegetables, into a deeply nourishing meal that feels luxurious, especially when partnered with homemade bread and butter.

If You Can Boil Water, You Can Make Soup

Unlike baking, which requires precision and skill, soup-making is forgiving. It’s a particularly good option for people who are new to cooking from scratch. There are no complicated techniques, no fussy ingredients, and only a little measuring and stirring involved.

Flexibility and intuition are the keys to making good soup, and it’s easy to swap one ingredient for an alternative, as long as it offers some passing similarities. For instance, if your recipe calls for kale and it’s looking a little too pricey at the grocery store, it’s easy to swap in a more affordable green and your soup will still taste just as delicious.

It’s Seriously Good for You

There are two essential ingredients to a good soup: broth and vegetables. Sure, meat, fish, milk, beans, and grains can certainly fill out the soup pot, but just about any soup will contain broth and vegetables.

Vegetable broths contain minerals such as potassium, while broths made from meat and bone are rich in gelatin, an important source of protein. Collagen is the primary protein found in connective tissue, and it’s plentiful in cheap cuts of meat such as chuck roast, oxtails, chicken backs, and neck bones. Simmering these cuts of meat transforms collagen into gelatin, which gives the resulting broth a luxurious silky feel and gives your soup a serving of protein, too.

Vegetable additions further contribute a plentiful amount of minerals, a good dose of antioxidants, and many vitamins. When you boil or even steam vegetables, some of their nutrition will be lost to the discarded cooking water. By contrast, soups retain all of that nutrition since the vegetables are served with their cooking liquid—the broth itself. These vegetables also come with plenty of fiber, which helps nourish and support gut health. Adding other fiber-rich foods, such as beans and lentils, certainly helps, too.

It Makes You Feel Full

Owing to their high water content, soups are deeply satiating foods that help you feel satisfied with less. According to a study published in the British Journal of Nutrition, people who eat soup regularly tend to weigh less and have smaller waists than those who don’t. Part of the reason why is the relative nutrient density of soup, partnered with its relatively low caloric load—a win for both your pocketbook and your waistline. And while any soup’s high water content certainly helps to hydrate the body and keep you feeling full, vegetable and bean soups can be a particularly good source of dietary fiber, which also increases satiety.

While soup tends to be affordable, nutrient-dense, and satiating, not all soups tick these boxes. Broth-based soups that are loaded with vegetables and pulses are a good example of wholesome options, but thickened soups such as “cream of” options, bisques, and chowders tend to have a higher caloric load and lower nutrient density. That translates to a lot of empty calories. So enjoy plenty of soups made with wholesome broths, vegetables, meat, and pulses, and avoid those made with thickeners such as white flour.

Put these wholesome options, packed with root vegetables and lentils, on weeknight rotation to get you through the cold winter months and beyond.

RECIPE: Chicken and Black Bean Soup

RECIPE: Lentil Stew

RECIPE: Carrot Leek Soup