Chef Steve’s Tomato Soup Recipe
This is a recipe that showcases Better Than Bouillon soup bases. Here at Smith County Memorial Hospital, we use quite a bit of the ham base because it imparts a smokey pork essence to food without using bacon in the recipe. Many of the authentic recipes I learned as a young cook: white gravy, clam and corn chowder, white bean soup, split pea soup, chili, Italian tomato sauce, and just about everything else started with a smoked pork like bacon. I still make many of those recipes for people eating a moderate diet, like the DASH diet, which allows some controlled amounts of fat and sodium. Better Than Bouillon ham base provides the bacon umami flavor profile without all the fat and sodium.
Stewed tomatoes are an item that I suggest that every person trying to improve their diet have in their cupboard. A high-quality stewed tomato can be used as a quick and satisfying sauce for a chicken breast or pasta right out of the can, and it takes just a little more effort to elevate it to a soup that will delight the most discerning pallet. Open cans and find a brand that you like. Many come with onions, peppers, and seasonings already in the can; not all are high in sodium. With not much effort, you can find one with 250 mg or so for a ½ cup serving.
The Best thing about this soup is that it is a 30-minute no-brainer that requires a minimum of cooking skill! I suggest you watch the video where I show you how to make this, but I’ll also go through it in steps here.
Sofrito is a Spanish cooking invention consisting of onion, celery, sweet pepper, and tomato cooked down with garlic. In the Hometown Café kitchen, we remove the tomato, add thyme, cook it almost dry, and use it in everything from meatloaf and meatballs to meat marinades. I start just about every soup with our version of sofrito. The Puerto Rican version of sofrito is wetter and incorporates cilantro.
Start with a minimal amount of oil. I use a high-quality canola-olive oil blend to reduce costs, but there’s no substitute for an excellent extra virgin olive oil. Always start with a hot pan, add the oil, and when the oil is hot, add the vegetables. Follow with the thyme, black pepper, and garlic pretty much immediately. As the vegetables start to carmelize, add some liquid. I like to use the water saved from cooking pasta. It has a nice starchy texture that imparts some extra body to everything you use it in! You can also use plain old water. Place a lid on the pan and let the vegetables cook all the way through. I use this step to reduce cooking time as well as the chance of scorching after the tomatoes go in. If you add the tomatoes before the vegetables are cooked through, you will need to diligently watch the pot to prevent scorching, and all that work adds nothing to the quality of the end product. The water will reduce as time goes by. Add the ham and chicken bases before the water evaporates. It will incorporate better with more water in the pot. The first stage is done! Let it simmer, and make sure the vegetables are fully cooked.
Once the vegetables are fully cooked, add the stewed tomatoes. The #10 cans are the huge ones that home cooks seldom use. They are commercial products, sometimes of higher quality, and are always cheaper! I dump the tomatoes into what is called a 2” hotel pan and run a knife through them to break them up a bit. You can also use your fingers. Getting your hands in the food is a good thing! Just make sure they are clean! Taste the soup as you go. You will need to correct the seasoning and determine if you need more liquid and if you want that liquid to be tomato juice, pasta water, or pipe stock. You have most of the work done now. All that’s left is seasoning and thickening.
Herbs de Provence is a classic blend of dried herbs used in French and Mediterranean cooking. It is dominated by lavender. Lavender can be intense, so add it gradually and let it settle into the soup for a minute. You can not taste the soup enough at this point! Train your pallet and rely on it! Basil leaf is a background flavor. Don’t add so much that it dominates the soup. Add some seasoned salt if your pallet says it is required. I nearly always add just a touch of seasoned salt. Wherever I use tomato products, I use a sweetener to balance against the acidity in the tomatoes, especially if they are canned. Some chefs use white sugar. I prefer agave, a syrup made from the same cactus plant that tequila is made from.
Now, you are ready for thickening. First, return the soup to a steady simmer, if not a boil. There’s no way to measure the amount of cornstarch you will need. Make a slurry and add it slowly, stirring constantly. If the soup is boiling, the cornstarch will thicken immediately. Stop when you like the consistency.
It doesn’t get any easier than that! The Herbs de Provence adds the “je ne sais quoi” that kicks it up a notch! A hint of curry is a nice touch, and saffron adds a high-brow twist, making this soup appropriate for a more cultured table!
Look for cooking tips and more recipes soon!
Eat Well – Be Well!
According to dietary guidelines for Americans 2015-2020, “sugary drinks are the number one source of added sugars in our diet, representing almost half of all added sugars we consume. Added sugars are a major culprit in the obesity and diabetes epidemics.” If you add snacks and sweets, just those two items represent a whopping 77 percent of the added simple sugars Americans get. If you are a staff member at Smith County Memorial Hospital and you have questioned why I do not offer sugary drinks and calorically dense desserts in Hometown Café, that is why! Fruits juices are no better than pop because they lack the fiber that is associated with the original whole fruit before it is processed into juice. If you love the juice, then eat the fruit! Sports and energy drinks are the same as pop. I am not going to get into an argument about artificial sweeteners here. Even if you have to drink diet pop with artificial sweeteners, it is better than drinking the calorically dense sugary drink! Try Diet Dr. Pepper; it is, in my opinion, the best diet version of a sugary drink.
A regular mayonnaise can have over 10 grams of fat for just a single one-tablespoon serving, and who doesn’t put two tablespoons on a sandwich? There are some superb low-fat mayonnaise products out there that reduce the fat to just over three grams of fat per one-tablespoon serving. Take it from a mayonnaise fanatic; at the end of your first week using a low-fat mayo, you won’t be able to tell the difference! Hellmann’s Light Mayonnaise is my personal favorite.
Ranch dressing is far and above the most popular salad dressing used in America, and Hidden Valley is the best. A two-tablespoon serving delivers a whopping 14 grams of fat, 2.5 grams of that saturated fat. Hidden Valley Lite provides less than half of the fat and saturated fat: five grams of fat (one gram saturated). Most brands of light ranch are lower in sodium as well. I would not suggest the fat-free Hidden Valley Ranch, but the Lite Ranch is an exceptional product that your taste buds will not object to!
Wish-Bone Italian dressing is one of America’s favorite Italian dressings. For a two-tablespoon serving, you will receive seven grams of fat (one gram saturated). The fat-free version is a good product and reduces calories from 80 to 15 with zero fat. Across the board, fat-free Italian dressings at pretty good flavor-wise, but you need to look at how much sugar they add to compensate for the elimination of fat. Some add so much sugar that they are a poor product to switch to, but there are many great fat-free dressings well worth the switch! I have not used a full-fat Italian style dressing in much more than a decade. If I am going to indulge in some fat, I want to save it for something spectacular. Full-fat Italian style dressing is a waste of fat calories!
Let’s be honest here. Changing the way we Americans use butter-like products is the best idea, but if that is too much for you, then switching to Smart Balance can save you about five grams of saturated fat and 31 mg of cholesterol every time you use just a one-tablespoon serving, which is about half of what a typical American will use at breakfast! A moderate diet like the DASH diet has allocations for saturated fat and cholesterol at 14 grams and 150 mg, respectively, so if you eat real butter and use two tablespoons at breakfast, you will use 71% of your saturated fat and 41% for your cholesterol allocation before you leave the house in the morning! Smart Balance is a great tasting product that is well worth trying; it is one reason our vegetables at the Hometown Café taste so good! It is a vegan product with zero trans-fat and zero cholesterol!
People in America are pizza crazy, and in some parts of the country like where I grew up in New Haven, Conn., it’s a religion. Two of the most famous pizza houses in the country are on the same block in New Haven; Pepe’s and Sally’s. The battle between them made New Haven the capitol of pizza in America. Don’t take my word for it google it! It’s a fact that especially in the mid-west, the version of pizza eaten has way too much cheese on it. No pizzeria in the world will object to you requesting that they use only 1/3 or even 1/4 of the cheese they usually use on your pie, and you will save a significant amount of calories, fat, saturated fat, cholesterol, and sodium by doing so and the pie will be better! The real goal is to eliminate cheese, but if that’s too much to bite off right now, then reducing the amount of cheese you eat can help jump start your plan to eat healthier!
For many Americans snacking is a significant source of empty calories and sodium. If eliminating snacks won’t work for you, try switching to healthier options. Lay’s classic potato chips have 10 grams of fat (1.5 grams saturated) per serving while the baked chips that we offer in Hometown Café have just 3.5 grams of fat (zero grams saturated) per serving. Pretzel chips by Snack Factory in the blue bag at Gene’s have only 110 calories with zero fat and 330 mg of sodium for a larger portion than the Lay’s potato chips. Those are the pretzel chips we serve with the hummus in Hometown Café. All processed snack products represent empty calories, and the goal is to eliminate those, but if that isn’t something that you can pull off right now, look around and find snack options that are healthier than the calorically dense and nutritional deficient options that immediately come to mind. Consult the nutrition facts label and see what you are eating; look before you leap!
Cherry Garcia is a food group for me. I don’t do it anymore, but when I used to open up a pint, it became one serving. That’s 1010 calories with 59 grams of fat (38 grams saturated) per pint! For the same amount, Chilly Cow chocolate chip cookie dough has 360 calories with 14 grams of fat (nine saturated). I am not suggesting that eating even lower-fat ice cream is a great idea, but you can shave off 650 calories and 45 grams of fat (29 grams saturated) and not experience withdrawal symptoms; it would be crazy not to do it!
Food texture is just as important as flavor. The crunch in a kettle chip of a handle full of popcorn adds as much to eating pleasure as salt, fat, or sugar! Soft and doughy foods are also pleasant at times. Who doesn’t like a crispy hot dog in a fresh, doughy bun? Bread has that appealing texture, but it isn’t really food. There is nothing to it at all except calories and sodium. There are very high-quality whole-wheat breads on the market that don’t make you sacrifice any of that very appealing soft texture and provide you with increased nutrients and fiber. Look on the nutrition facts label and make sure that the bread you select has at least 3 grams of fiber preserving. Watch the sodium though. Some breads hit as much as 500 mg in a portion, and the DASH diet limit is about 2,000 mg a day! The goal is to move to a very high-quality, nutrient-dense bread like Ezekiel bread, but at the start switch to whole wheat made in the style of the soft white bread you are used to and it won’t make you sacrifice much at all!
Leaving aside the whole argument about how appropriate it is for humans to be drinking cow’s milk, if you drink cow’s milk for each 8-ounce glass of whole milk, you are getting 146 calories, eight grams of fat (five saturated), and 24 mg of cholesterol. In terms of DASH diet parameters, that is 12 percent of the fat, 36 percent of the saturated fat, and 16 percent of the cholesterol you are allowed for the entire day; just one cup! Not many milk drinkers drink only 8 ounces a day. Switching to two percent will save you 43 calories, three grams of total fat, and reduce saturated fat by 2.5 grams. It will only shave off three mg of cholesterol, though. Switching to skim milk will save you 63 calories, 8 grams of total fat (five saturated), and 18 mg of cholesterol! If you move from whole to skim milk in one shot, the taste difference will be more than noticeable. But, if you allow your mouth to acclimate first to two percent milk first and then after a week or two step down again to skim milk, the taste difference is far less noticeable. Especially if you drink three to five glasses of milk a day, the reduction in calories, fat, saturated fat and cholesterol is significant.
As low hanging fruit, buy the cheapest multivitamin you can find and take one a day. Average Americans eat so few fruits, vegetables, whole grains, beans, and legumes and eat so much nutritionally deficient processed food that just about all of us are not receiving the nutrients we need to keep our bodies functioning properly. Taking a multi-vitamin every day is fast and doesn’t hurt the wallet. It’s a no-brainer and there is absolutely no reason not to do it!
Exercise used to be part of our everyday life as a human. We have so many energy saving devices now that you do not have to get any exercise at all if you don’t want to. This lack of exercise, coupled with our poor diet, is why we are in the health crisis we are in! The National Weight Control Registry is a large, now 27-year-old study of more than 10,000 people that have lost 30 pounds or more and kept it off for at least one year. Ninety-four percent of those people increased their physical activity, with the most frequently reported form of activity being walking. If you are seriously overweight, ask your provider if walking is okay for you and only increase the level of exercise under their supervision. Start by walking out of your front door and down to the sidewalk and come back. There is absolutely no excuse not to do that right now! For those of us that are already walking, increasing the number of steps, we get in every day can help burn extra calories and build stamina. Try parking at the furthest place from the door at work, not the closest!
Here are the references for the Healthy Eating Tips:
Challa HJ, Ameer MA, Uppaluri KR. DASH Diet (Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension) National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). National Library of Medicine (NLM). National Institutes of Health (NIH). Books. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK482514/. (Accessed 7/24/2020).
Appel LJ, Moore TJ, Obarzanek E, et al. A clinical trial of the effects of dietary patterns on blood pressure. DASH Collaborative Research Group. New England Journal of Medicine 1997;336:1117-1124.
U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. Office of Disease Prevention and Health Promotion. Health.gov. Our Work. Food & Nutrition. 2015 2020 Dietary Guidelines. (Accessed 9/10/2020.)
Campbell TC. A plant-based diet and animal protein: questioning dietary fat and considering animal protein as the main cause of heart disease. Journal of Geriatric Cardiology. 2017 May;14(5):331-7.
Esselstyn CB. Resolving the Coronary Artery Disease Epidemic Through Plant-Based Nutrition. Preventive Cardiology 2001;4: 171-177
Campbell TC, Parpia B, Chen J. Diet, lifestyle, and the etiology of coronary artery disease: the Cornell China Study. American Journal of Cardiology. 1998;82(10B):18T–21T.
Ornish D, Scherwitz LW, Billings JH, et al. Intensive lifestyle changes for reversal of coronary heart disease. Journal of the American Medical Association. 1998;280:2001–2007.
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