Tip #38 - The Lowest-Fat Soup

WOULD YOU BELIEVE: While chicken broth is 1.35 grams of fat per cup, vegetarian broth is only 0.19 grams per cup. SOME FACTS: For most people, soup means using beef, chicken, or fish broth as a base. While this is much better than a cream base soup, you can do even better with a vegetarian broth. You can then add some "zing" by using onions or garlic or pepper, or your favorite herbs and spices. Try it with the soup recipes you'll find here. Make sure they taste exactly the way you want them, so you can enjoy eating more in order to weigh less.

If you can't find the "chicken" powder, use a brand of canned vegetarian broth. These convenient, low-fat products are found in health food stores or the soup section of almost any supermarket.
You can also use a seaweed, such as konbu, as a base for your soup. Simply soak the seaweed, boil it in water, and use the water as soup stock.
Another option is to save the broth from the steamer when you steam vegetables. Freeze it in ice trays or other small containers so you can defrost only as much as you want for any given soup base.
Making soups vegetarian and low fat can be easy, if you learn the simple secrets I'm sharing with you here.

WHAT YOU CAN DO:
• Use vegetarian chicken powder for soups.
• Try seaweed broth.
• Use canned vegetarian broth.
• Make your own vegetarian broth with the following recipe.


Chickenless Bouillon
1½ C Nutritional yeast flakes
3 Tbsp. Onion powder
2½ tsp. Garlic powder
1 Tbsp. Salt
1 tsp. Celery seed
2½ Tbsp. Italian seasoning
2 Tbsp. Dried parsley

Put all the ingredients, except parsley in a blender and make a fine powder. Stir in parsley. Store in an airtight container. Use about one tablespoon per cup of water. Makes 32 portions. (1 portion = 20.08 calories, 0.085 grams fat, 43% protein, 53% carbohydrates, 3% fat)

Nutritional yeast is not the same as yeast used for baking bread. It can be purchased at the health food store. This is a good veggie broth that can be used as a soup stock, or to flavor rice. It has a lot less salt than commercially made veggie broth.

Wakame Onion Mushroom Soup
1 handful Wakame
1 Onion, diced
4C Water from soaking the wakame
1-2 Tbsp. Miso
2 Shiitake mushrooms, dried
Soak wakame and mushrooms in 1 cup of water until soft, cut into 1" pieces. Sauté onions in ¼ cup of water.
Add water from soaked wakame and mushrooms and the rest of the water. Bring to a boil, add the wakame and mushrooms, and cook over low flame until it is tender.
Add miso to taste by diluting 1 to 2 tablespoons of miso in a ladle full of the soup water, mashing and smoothing out the miso and adding it back to the pot. Leftover grain or noodles may be added if desired. Makes 6 portions. (1 portion = 23 calories, 0.3 grams fat, 16% protein, 73% carbohydrates, 12% fat)
Variations:

Other variations on this soup would include adding onions, cauliflower, shiitake mushrooms, celery, tofu chunks, etc., to wakame broth. You can also add medium grain brown rice, or barley, or use miso soup as a broth to pour over your whole grains.

One delicious breakfast treat is cream of buckwheat cereal with a tablespoon of miso mixed in. It's wholesome, hot, and delicious.