A key to Perfect Soups - Best Recipes (India Network)

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Take stock the next time you walk through the soup aisle at your local grocery store. Soup can be good and healthy food. It can be a tasty way to add healthy beans, legumes, grains and vegetables to your diet. It's a convenient, yet inexpensive way to add protein, vitamins, minerals and fiber to your diet. And soup is both comforting and filling--a hot, savory bowl can help take the chill out of the fall and winter seasons. Want more reasons to ladle up?

Soup may curb your appetite - Studies show that people who eat broth or vegetable-based soups (not creamy or high-fat ones) as the first course of a meal consume fewer total calories during their meal. In fact, study participants consumed 20% fewer calories when they started their meal with soup!

Soup can help you slow down - Eating a bowl of soup involves spooning, slurping, smelling, tasting, chewing, and swallowing. This helps you slow down your eating time instead of inhaling your food. Slower eaters tend to notice signs of fullness sooner and consume fewer calories by better enjoying their food in the moment.

Soup stimulates the senses - These warm concoctions have unique aromas, tastes, enjoyable temperatures and visual interest, which add to the pleasure you experience when eating.

While some nutrients are lost when making soup, they are still a great source of vitamins and other nutrients if they're properly prepared. Here are a few tips to retain maximum vitamin content:

Use fresh veggies as soon as possible as they lose vitamins as they age. Don't defrost frozen veggies to avoid losing any vitamins in the frozen liquid surrounding them. Wherever possible keep the skin on veggies as these contain the majority of the nutrients.

While chopping veggies finely will cut down on the cooking time and avoid them losing vitamins in the pot, it will also cause the veggies to lose nutrients on the cut surface. For this reason, you should use the veggies as soon as they're chopped up. Short cooking times are better than long, slow ones, as more of the nutrients can be retained in the pot. Let us discuss a healthy soup recipe.

Mediterranean-style seafood soup

Ingredients Nutrition
1 tbs olive oil
1 large brown onion, halved, finely chopped
1 red capsicum, halved, deseeded, finely chopped
3 garlic cloves, crushed
1 x 400g can diced Italian tomatoes
375ml (1 1/2 cups) fish stock
Pinch of saffron threads
1 dried bay leaf
2 x 5cm strips lemon rind
1kg skinless fish fillets cut into 3cm pieces
1/2 cup finely shredded fresh basil
Freshly ground black pepper

Method Notes
Step 1
Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and capsicum and cook, stirring, for 10 minutes or until onion softens slightly. Add the garlic and cook, stirring, for 1 minute or until aromatic.
Step 2
Add the tomato, fish stock, saffron, bay leaf and lemon rind. Bring to the boil. Reduce heat to low and simmer, covered, for 15 minutes or until soup thickens slightly.
Step 3
Add the fish and cook, uncovered, for 5 minutes or until fish is just cooked.
Step 4
Ladle the soup among serving bowls. Sprinkle with basil and season with pepper. Serve immediately.

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