June 2011
I recently checked out the salt content of soups available in supermarkets. Almost all had high levels and a single 250 mL serve of most prepared would give you about two day’s supply of sodium (sodium makes up 40% of salt).
Soups bearing the Heart Foundation tick were no better. Indeed some Tick-bearing soups had more salt than regular soups and all had so much salt they would get a red light in the traffic light labelling scheme recommended in a recent food labelling review.
The high salt content of canned and packet soups has concerned many of us for years. Soups are such comforting foods in winter and yet high blood pressure is so common, especially among older people. A high salt intake is also related to tinnitus.
A few years ago, I asked a food technologist from one of our major food companies why he didn’t make soups with less salt. He replied that the soups would have no flavour.
I then asked why the canning process removed flavour and he assured me it did not. After talking for a while, I offered to give him my recipe for pumpkin soup, which has loads of flavour without added salt. He said he’d give it a try.
When I next saw my friend, he told me that my soup recipe didn’t work and he’d had to add the usual amount of salt to it. I quizzed him on whether he had used all the herbs and spices. He said he had. I then asked him if he had used a full-flavoured stock. He hesitated on that but said he’d used their salt-reduced version (incidentally, these products may have 25% less salt than regular prepared stock, but their salt content is still very high). I let that one pass and asked whether he had roasted the pumpkin, onion and garlic because the roasting caramelises the natural sugars in the vegetables and adds extra flavour.
His reply stunned me for a moment: “No, we couldn’t do that”, he said, “because we couldn’t use pumpkin, that would be far too expensive”. Instead, he had used pumpkin powder and ‘natural’ carotenes to produce an orange colour. The lack of pumpkin also meant the soup needed thickening with starch.
So pumpkin soup had to be made without real pumpkin! Such a bulky expensive ingredient would make factory production too cumbersome and expensive. So that’s why commercial soups are so different from what you can make yourself.
In my opinion, the lack of real ingredients in canned and packet soups makes them very expensive. They may seem relatively cheap, but when you take a good look at what you’re getting, they’re a real waste of money.
With colleagues, I fought for years to get ingredients listed on foods. We won that battle and ingredients must be listed on all foods in their order of prominence. Check where the chicken comes in the chicken soup!
We also fought to get the percentage of major ingredients listed. We won and it became mandatory to include any ingredient mentioned in the product’s name. You can now, at least check out the amount of chicken in a soup with chicken in the name or the amount of pumpkin in the pumpkin soup (even if it does come from pumpkin powder).
For salty reasons, but also for good flavour and general nutrition, I’m a big fan of home-made soups. It’s easy to make a big pot of soup and if you don’t have a lot of people to eat it, divide it into smaller portions and freeze it for later use.
Chicken stock
After you’ve enjoyed roast chicken, place all bones and the remaining carcass into a large saucepan. Pour boiling water into the roasting pan, stir to dissolve any pan drippings and add to the chicken bones. Add enough water to cover and throw in any leftover vegetables. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 30-40 minutes. Cool and strain the stock into a bowl. Refrigerate or freeze until required.
Vegetable stock
Place a chopped onion (no need to peel), a roughly chopped carrot, a few stalks of sliced celery and a few pieces of fresh parsley and thyme (or 1 tsp dried herbs) and 3-4 bay leaves into a large saucepan with 1L water. Add any other vegetables (there’s sure to be something in the bottom of the crisper). Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 30-40 minutes. Cool and strain stock into a bowl.
Roasted pumpkin soup
1.5 kg pumpkin, cut into chunks, seeds removed
1 large onion, peeled and halved
3 large cloves garlic
olive oil
1 tsp dried thyme
1 tsp dried oregano
piece of orange peel, about 10 cm long
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock
pinch nutmeg
low-fat natural yoghurt
2 tsp finely grated orange peel
black pepper
1. Pre-heat oven to 180°C. Place pumpkin, onion and unpeeled garlic on a baking dish and spray with olive oil, or heat 2 tsps olive oil in the baking dish and roll the vegetables in it. Bake for about 45 minutes or until pumpkin flesh is tender. When cool enough to handle, peel pumpkin and discard skin.
2. In a large saucepan combine the roasted pumpkin, onion and the flesh squeezed from the garlic with herbs, orange peel and stock. Bring to the boil, cover and simmer for 5 minutes.
3. Remove orange rind and puree soup in batches in a food processor or blender, adding nutmeg. Return soup to saucepan and reheat. Serve topped with a dollop of yoghurt, the finely grated orange rind and a sprinkling of pepper.
Serves 4