Vegetable Beef Soup - Healthy Recipes Blog (2024)

FAQs

How healthy is homemade vegetable soup? ›

Vegetable soups offer an excellent source of fiber, vitamins, minerals and flavor. Serve as a side or make them the main course – these nutrient-dense dishes are low in calories and carbs but high in satisfaction.

Soy(a) sauce, fish sauce or Worcestershire sauce add great flavour to soups in moderation- they add salt and umami without making it changing the style of soup. Mushrooms, especially dried add an earthy flavour. Green onions or parsley added just before you eat adds bright flavour and is really nice.

Add Flour Or Cornstarch

Instead, ladle a small amount of broth into a separate bowl and let it cool. Add a few tablespoons of flour or cornstarch to the bowl and whisk until it's blended smooth. Next, bring the soup to a simmer and add the mixture back to the pot. Pro tip: Don't dump in the entire mixture at once.

What do I do if my vegetable beef soup tastes bland? The best way to ensure a flavorful soup is to brown the beef and onions in the beginning. If the soup tastes bland at the end of cooking, add more spices and herbs. After adding, allow the soup to cook a little longer so the flavors to meld together.

For clear, brothy soups, stock is your most important ingredient. If you want to make a good soup, you need to use an excellently flavored stock — otherwise, the entire pot could be tasteless.

To season it, we recommend starting with our Vegetable Soup Mix. It contains celery salt, parsley flakes, garlic powder, sea salt, summer savory, marjoram, thyme, black pepper, turmeric and sage, which are all excellent with root vegetables, so you can incorporate things like carrots or potatoes into the soup.

"Ground paprika, turmeric, nutmeg, ground ginger, and other powdered spices add a touch of color and spiciness to broths," she says. As a general rule, use fresh herbs at or near the end of cooking and dried herbs and spices early on. This helps you get the flavors you're looking for in the right balance.

A squeeze of citrus, a dollop of yogurt or a drizzle of cream, a dusting of cheese or a good chile powder, a sprinkling of some herbs or croutons — all can take a perfectly fine soup into the realm of the delectable. Even a spiral of good olive oil to finish and some coarse sea salt can do wonders.

Beef stock on its own should be extremely rich; how did you make it? If the soup is already made and you just want to deepen the flavour, try a shake of a pre-made sauce such as Worcestershire, brown sauce, barbecue sauce, soy or even kecap manis etc. For next time, more or better beef stock.

How do I make my soup taste more beef? ›

If you are adding meat to a soup, sear or brown it in a sauté pan before you add it to the soup. This adds a deeper savory flavor to the whole soup.

For a thicker soup, add tomato paste halfway through cooking.

Foods in the Brassica family, such as collards, are too strong for stock/broth and can impart a bitter taste. Corn doesn't add a lot of flavor and can make the stock/broth cloudy.

Adding Worcestershire Sauce To Soups

It will work in a broad range of dishes from your favorite French onion soup to velvety tomato bisque. It definitely does a great job of amping up the meaty flavors of a beef stew as well as giving vegetable soups a flavor lift, too.

Boiled — When cooking vegetables over a long period of time in water, some nutrients will be lost. However, if the water will be consumed with the vegetables — as in the case of soups, stews or curries — many of the vitamins will be retained in the final dish.

What Experts Say. "The concept of eating soup to lose weight has spanned decades, but experts say an all-soup diet lacks nutrients and is not sustainable. They do agree it can be smart to eat vegetable-packed soups for some meals, though, as these are filling, nutrient-dense, and low in calories."

Some healthy soups to cook for yourself include chicken soup (everyone's favorite!), minestrone, cabbage, Tuscan bean, and borscht (which is beet soup). Any combination of vegetables and lean protein (think chicken breast or beans) can go a long way to helping you create a healthy soup!

There is no harm in eating soup every day as long as it is part of a balanced diet that includes a variety of nutrient-dense foods. However, it is important to make sure that the soup you are eating is not high in salt, fat, or added sugars. It is also important to pay attention to portion sizes.