Supercharging Soups: Uncommon Ingredients to Boost Nutritional Value
Soups are some of the best and most delicious foods available. They’re also packed with nutrients when cooked properly and can give you a high-quality range of delicious menu options. However, it’s important to find cool and delicious ingredients you might not normally consider to ensure that you produce diverse and interesting soup varieties. Here are several ingredient options that might transform your soups and create the taste variety you deserve.
Mesquite: Not Just for Barbecues
Mesquite is a unique plant that can be used in various recipes to produce diverse and delicious tastes. For example, its bark is a natural sweetener that can balance your blood sugar and provide a fiber-rich and protein-dense flavor that has a vanilla-style flavor. It can work surprisingly well in soups as long as you carefully harvest the beans for your soup.
Cook and prepare them as you would any beans and add them to your traditional soups. They work well in vegetable blends, though they can also bring an extra kick to your chicken noodle soups. Interestingly, you can also use mesquite flour in your recipes if you like, so you could replace traditional flour with this option when making homemade soup noodles to improve your meal.
Ashwagandha: A Tasty Herb You’ll Love
Ashwagandha is a medicinal herb that provides a unique array of benefits, including boosting brain function, managing stress, improving anxiety, and reducing anxiety symptoms. It’s not necessarily the tastiest herb because it typically has a fairly low-key flavor that might not appeal to many. That said, it’s easy to blend it with a variety of different ingredients to get great results.
For example, you can blend it in with your flavor to integrate it into your delicious noodles to make them even tastier. However, you can also sprinkle it onto your soup broth if you’d rather try it that way. That’s a great step if you don’t mind the taste of ashwagandha or its smell. Often, you can grind the root up into a powder to make it even easier to use.
Goji Berries: A Truly Unique Soup Item
Most people wouldn’t look at goji berries and think they were suitable for soup. However, these tasty and protein-packed berries can work well in many types of unique soups. For example, you can try adding them into a combination of nuts and berries and mixing them with a traditional tomato soup to give it more kick. You can also turn it into a great jam for your soup.
You can also prepare a goji berry smoothie that might serve well with your soup and drink it on the side. That can ensure that you have a high-quality and diverse array of flavors that make sense for your needs. Just as importantly, you can create various protein bowls with goji berries that you can turn into a soup with some broth of your choice, depending on your taste.
Cordyceps: Medicinal Mushrooms With a Purpose
Now, when something is called “the caterpillar mushroom,” you might feel a little nervous eating it. Never fear! Cordyceps are not only very edible but delicious! They’re a unique mushroom variety that’s been used in Chinese medicine for years to treat a variety of health problems. They can even be used in soups if you carefully cook them and sprinkle them in safely.
For example, there are various chicken soups that you can prepare that use cordyceps, goji berries (remember them?), and much more. As one of the most unique mushroom types on the planet today, these stringy and tasty fungus growths are well worth investing in if you want to improve your soups and give them the delicious taste variety that you deserve in life.
Maca: A Well-Known Peruvian Superfood
Maca comes from a cruciferous root vegetable that is typically ground up into a powder that can be spread into various foods quickly and efficiently. Typically, cooking with Maca includes creating various drinks, such as protein shakes, due to its high level of high-quality vitamins and minerals. Thankfully, you can also integrate it into your soups to make it healthier and tastier.
For example, you can simply add it to your tomato soups by sprinkling it on top and letting it settle into the broth. You can also add it to your ingredients before cooking them, such as letting it soak into the meat and vegetables. That step helps to ensure that the flavor of Maca comes out more in your soup and ensures that it tastes as great as possible for your meals.
Spirulina: Algae You Can Eat
We know that eating algae might not sound very appetizing, but spirulina is a little different. It’s packed with vitamins from the B spectrum, copper, protein, iron, and much more. It can be prepared in a variety of ways that make it more appealing. You can use it in soup by sprinkling powder or even solid bits of this algae into your soup and cooking it as you would normally.
We strongly recommend using the solid plant throughout your soup, almost as you would with cabbage or lettuce. That’s because this helps bring out the taste of this algae and makes it more appealing. In savory foods like soups, it’s important to avoid overwhelming the taste of Spirulina by using solid varieties that more easily spread their flavor and provide a satisfying crunch.
FAQ
These unique ingredients should be shared with as many people as you want to provide a diverse and engaging array of flavors! Make sure that you share them with people who are willing to help you with your recipes. After all, fair is fair.
Are there any concerns I should note?
When eating new foods like these, we suggest getting an allergy test from your doctor to minimize your risks. After all, if you’ve never tried them before, you might have an allergy you don’t know about. Other than that, these are healthy and safe ingredients to use.
What’s the best way to prepare delicious soups?
The methods you use to cook soups will vary depending on what recipe you use and which ingredients you enjoy. It’s almost always best to cook all of your ingredients in one large pot to ensure that the ingredients stew together and share flavors with the broth.
Will these ingredients make storage harder?
Thankfully, there should be no major problems storing your tasty soups with these ingredients. They don’t affect your ability to put them in the refrigerator or even freeze them, which means that they can last for a long time if you can’t eat a whole pot of soup on the first day.
