Healthy Cooking Live with Steve

Soups Only Version 2.0 features 5 more succulent soups!

Mushroom and barley soup is perhaps the quintessential winter soup.  This version uses shitake mushrooms and the whole barley berry not its nutritionally inferior pearled cousin!  The onion soup was inspired by the wonderfully rich onion soup described by America’s Test Kitchen; we’ll leave out all the butter and oil, but not the flavor!  The callaloo soup is a healthy variation of what I learned from some very talented cooks that worked for me at the Half Moon Bay Club in Montego Bay Jamaica.  We’ll be using some greens available here in the States that yield a quite acceptable facsimile.  Wendy Esko’s 1996 small, but classic “Soup du Jour” cookbook inspired the creamy chick pea and sweet rice soups, but I’ve taken them to a different level!  As always the recipes are all meat-free, oil-free, dairy-free, and low in sodium!

For the health conscious eater, especially those going through a lifestyle modification involving weight reduction, soup can be a way to introduce creativity and variety as well as satisfaction.  A small, but well structured study attested to the high degree of satisfaction derived from soups leading subjects to actually consume almost 30% less calories when presented soup as opposed to the same food items in a different form.[1], [2], [3]  Soup is almost an essential dietary component of any lifestyle modification protocol!  These data were confirmed and their implications expanded in a larger 2007 study that found “pre-loading” or consuming soup in a variety of forms before a meal reduced overall calorie intake for both men and women 18-45. [4]

With Soups Only v2.0 we’re going to continue trying to identify that magical moment when ingredients become more than the sum of their parts.  Soups are where you best learn to isolate flavor profiles and blend them to create something that’s truly special.  Learning how to manipulate all the variables of that “flavor graphic equalizer” is what these Soups Only demonstrations are all about...I hope you can join us!

Look for “Soups Only” v3.0 Spring Edition and v4.0 Summer Edition coming later this year!

On the Menu:

• Creamy Chick Pea Soup with Roasted Pepper
• Sweet Rice and White Miso Winter Vegetable
• Oil-Free French Style Onion Soup
• American Callaloo Soup
• Shitake Mushroom & Hulless Barley

Topics For Discussion

• Chronic disease: the modern dietary dilemma
• How to cook tasty food with less salt, fat, & sugar
• Kitchen organization for healthy cooking; the basics
• Using a pressure cooker; the basics
• What food to keep on hand
• What equipment to have in your kitchen

[1] Bell EA, Rolls BJ.  Effect of water content of food on satiety.  FASEB Journal.  1999;13:A870.
[2] Rolls BJ, Bell EA, Thorwart ML.  Water incorporated into a food but not served with a food decreases energy intake in lean women.  Am. J. Clin. Nutr.  1999;70:448–455.
[3] Mattes R.  Soup and Satiety.  Physiol Behav.  2005;83(5):739-47.
[4] Flood JE, Roll BJ. Soup preloads in a variety of forms reduce meal energy intake.  Appetite.  2007;49:626–634.