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With colder weather upon us, it's a great time to add soup as a meal. I love to make homemade soup, but there are those times when I have to get that can opener out. I'd love to hear some suggestions about great canned soups that don't taste like 'canned' soup, esp those under 300 calories.
My current favorite is Wolfgang Puck's Country Tomato with Basil.
I also like Healthy Choice's Clam Chowder. I scoop out the potato chunks, add a can on baby clams and add salt/pepper.
Homemade Potato soup
Well I was going to say Clam Chowder until I saw the words Wolfgang Puck, then I remembered my awesome recipe for his Creamy Mushroom Soup. To die for (or to "live" for as we insist on saying at my house....)
I'm so boring; I go ga-ga for tomato soup. I generally don't even like cream-based soups, which is good for the waistline. And tomato's only 50 cents a can. More money for bike stuff. :D
Store bought - I'm a Chicken Noodle girl. For homemade I can do a pretty awesome Potato Leek Chowder.
Chinese Hot and Sour from the Noodle Express here in town. I can live on it.
Although I seem to eat alot of it, I don't really liked prepared/can soup. Just too much salt.
I do love a good tomato soup (with a grilled cheese sandwich thank you), chicken and wild rice, butternut squash and apples (great for Thanksgiving) , split pea and all time favorite mushroom (not Campbell's cream of but a good home made mushroom soup - YUM).
I generally like any homemade soup.
oohhh I love split pea (especially homemade) but the sodium is way up there. Actually, except for tomato, all the soups I likeare probably way over the 300cal mark....
My favorites are Progresso Lentil and Imagine's Butternut Squash
I don't use canned soup either. What I do is make a big pot of soup and then freeze it in individual serving size containers. With some yogurt or cottage cheese, I usually have lunch for many days to come.
My favorite soup has a red lentil base:
- 1 onion chopped
- a little bit of oil for cooking the onion...
- 1 pound split red lentils (usually purchased at Whole Foods, also easily found at Wild Oats, never in the "regular" grocery store because I've never seen them there...)
- 7 to 8 cups water / vegetable stock
- spices to taste - I usually use some cumin, dried chili peppers, garlic
- 1 pound tofu, cut into cubes
And then I throw in whatever vegetables that interest me that day. My choice of vegetables often includes carrots, edamame, corn, celery, sometimes potatos or sweet potatos. Oh, and I use a lot of vegetables. As in, I could easily add 2 to 3 cups of the corn & edamame...
Red lentils cook really fast, so this isn't an all-day cooking kind of soup.
--- Denise
I make my own quick version of Chicken and Rice using canned low sodium chicken broth, you can throw in whatever veggies you fancy, rotissierie chicken and cooked rice.
I also have a pretty quick to put together recipe for Turkey Tortilla soup that substitute Rotissierie chicken into.
V.
My mom's Turkey Noodle soup, which she made from the last pickings off the holiday turkey. Ingredients included homemade gravy, carrots, celery, onions, some spices, salt, and egg noodles.
My favorite canned soup is Amy's Organic cream of tomato (not actually creamy). I don't even like tomatoes that much, but I like this soup, especially with some black pepper added, and some parmesan or pecorino romano on the side. It is fresh and tomato-y and not sweet. Amy's other soups are also good, especially lentil and black bean.
My favorite homemade soup is Avgolemono - Greek lemon chicken soup. It's tricky to make (incorporating beaten eggs into hot broth without curdling them), but absolutely warming and delicious. Here's the basic recipe:
Heat 6 cups chicken broth to boil, reduce to simmer.
Add 1 cup orzo and cook in the broth. (That may be too much orzo, I can't remember the proportions).
Separate two eggs and beat the whites to very soft peaks.
Beat in the juice of one lemon and the egg yolks (into the whites).
Temper the egg mixture by adding 2 cups of the hot broth while beating fast.
Take the soup off the burner and stir in the egg/lemon mixture. If you've tempered the eggs correctly they should make the soup thick and frothy, but not become solid.
Creamy and delicious! I often add shredded cooked chicken, too.
Only once did I accidentally leave the soup on the burner, and curdled the eggs. Gross, and very sad for me, as it was a chilly gray day and I had been thinking of this soup for my entire 45-minute commute home.
My mom makes an amazing baked potato soup that is to die for. Italian wedding soup is also really good. There's a Greek food restaurant here in Houston that makes a glorious chicken and rice soup that has dill and lemon in it. Yum! Now I want soup!
Pumpkin. My favorite type is a high-starch one that is called orange dwarf here, don't know what it would be called in the states.
I usually add garlic and ginger, sometimes I turn it into something thai-like by adding coconut milk powder.
Another variant is decorating with a dollop of creme fraiche and pumpkin seed oil.