Don’t let the ‘souping’ trend give soup a bad name

Much like juicing, soup-only diets are targeted at people wanting to ‘detox’. But what if you just want a healthy dinner?

Chickpea tofu soup Source: SBS Food

Souping! For a few years now, I’ve tried to ignore this trend, mainly because the obsession with the verbing of nouns really irks me. Take the word gift. Why use it as a verb, one editor friend said, when there is already a perfectly good verb: give?

This process of turning nouns into verbs and verbs into nouns is nothing new. As a matter of fact, it’s been around for centuries. But for the past few years, it’s been so very indiscriminate. I’ve kind of taken a shine to Googling. But Kindling (which is not the same as kindling), journalling, and concepting? If you ask me, those don’t do much to advance the language, let alone communication, compared with the drama inherent in “a magician’s reveal” or “an epic fail”.

Now there’s souping, which is no longer what you do to a car to improve its performance but involves an all-soup diet to help you lose a few pounds or “detox” (oh, don’t get me started). Souping is the new juicing, according to a story that appeared recently in The New York Times — and in the Fashion & Style section, no less.

A Los Angeles–based company called Soupure is generally credited for kick-starting the trend in 2014 with a line of puréed soups, broths, flavoured alkaline waters, and cleanse programs. “Whether you ‘soup’ by cleansing or enjoy our soups as a family meal, snack, starter course, or refreshing beverage, they are all an optimal way to ensure the benefits of consuming whole fruits and vegetables throughout the day,” the website states. “We are committed to keeping the fibrous flesh, seeds, rind, and pulp for the most authentic collection of diverse and intact nutrients your body can actually recognise.”

Marketing pitch (can we have a moratorium on the word authentic, please?) and expense aside, I can’t in good conscience quarrel with any plan or product that makes it easier and more convenient to work more vegetables and other healthful ingredients into anyone’s diet. Unlike the offerings at a juice bar — which tend to be high in natural sugars and thus cause a spike in your blood sugar — soup can be a good source of healthy fats, protein, and complex carbohydrates, such as those found in legumes. As I wrote in a 2013 piece on juicing, many foods — including carrots, spinach, asparagus, tomatoes, cabbage, and peppers — supply even more antioxidants (lycopene and ferulic acid among them) to the body when cooked.

I also find myself thinking of folks who grew up eating soup that comes out of cans. Their first taste of one made from fresh, wholesome, flavourful ingredients must be a revelation. But I’ll never be a souper. Not when I can make soup.

It is the ultimate comfort food, after all, and one of the most forgiving things in the world to cook. Given our increasing familiarity with exotic ingredients and flavours, the soups of other cultures — from Vietnamese pho to a Mexican tortilla soup to a Moroccan-style harira — can broaden our culinary horizons and take us through the day, the week, and beyond.

In many Japanese households, salty-sweet-smoky miso soup is served at lunch and dinner, but it really comes into its own at breakfast. Made from the simple, delicate (and quick) sea stock called dashi and thickened with shiro (white) miso, it gets the day off to a serene, contemplative start.

Source: Alan Benson

Chicken congee (arroz caldo)

China is the home country for another one of the world’s great breakfast soups: congee (also known as jook). The thick rice porridge can be flavoured with all manner of ingredients and toppings. It provides morning sustenance that will get you through until supper. Lentils are my go-to weeknight legume because they cook quickly and are at home in the world. They work as well in a hearty soup with lamb kofta as they do with Indian flavours.

Source: Alan Benson

Leek, potato and hazelnut soup

Some soups are especially restorative. A bowlful will make you feel that all is right with the world: a potato and leek soup is a great example of what I mean. 

The brothy Italian soup called stracciatella is another excellent example — and it’s reason alone to have chicken broth on hand. It’s easy, quick, and enriched with “little rags” of parmesan-flavoured egg. Adding frozen spinach or a few handfuls of fresh baby spinach makes it even more nourishing and filling. Pull this together at the end of a long day, and everyone around the table will feel nurtured and nourished.

This article was originally published on TakePart.com  Read the original article.