Avoid Canned Soup with BPA, Make Homemade Soup

Secrets to Making All Made-at-Home Soup Recipes Taste Great

Nov 4, 2009

With Consumer Reports on the warpath with the FDA over inadequate regulation of BPA, an ingredient used in the plastic liner of metal cans, what to do? Make soup at home.

What's a soup lover to do? Somewhere lurking in the pantries of millions of American homes are now-suspect cans of Progresso Vegetable Soup and Campbell’s Condensed Chicken Noodle Soup. Alas, some of these soups (and other canned foods) may have been packed into metal cans made with a potentially dangerous chemical called BPA (Bisphenol A.)

Consumer Reports Raises Alarm Over Canned Foods, Notably Certain Canned Soups

Consumer Reports has expressed concern that BPA could be especially dangerous for babies and small children. Their November 2009 report says that BPA is linked to adverse health effects including reproductive abnormalities, heightened risk of breast and prostate cancers, diabetes, and heart disease. Among the products highlighted for possibly dangerous levels of BPA were some of the nation's favorite soups.

Two Secrets to Making Great, Fast, Healthful, Homemade Soup

The good news is, one can make soup out of just about anything, from just carrots and potatoes, to vegetables to fish heads to turkey carcasses to chicken to lamb to beef to...even fruit. A homemade soup can be extremely nutritious. And, few things are more pocketbook-friendly: the main ingredient, after all, is water.

There are two secrets to homemade soup. Only one is an ingredient: good soup stock, homemade or store-bought. The other is a basic kitchen appliance: the blender.

Use a Blender for Homemade Soups, Free of BPA

A blender does magic with soups. Love a smooth, rich-tasting corn soup? One minute in a blender can transform a milk-free soup of corn, potatoes, salt and a little stock into an almost illicitly creamy soup. (Add cream, and go to heaven.) Ever wonder how the local restaurant makes that silky carrot-ginger soup? Half the secret is that they've blended it. Need a good strong lentil soup to gird up for a day at the kids’ soccer game? Cook up some lentils, carrots and onion with some spices, put it in the blender for a minute, and there’s lunch.

With home cooking comes peace of mind. One knows precisely what's in a homemade soup, with no nasty surprises like discovering that one is feeding the family BPAs along with a supposedly healthy meal.

Price-wise, blenders run the gamut. For instance, Hamilton Beach Blenders can be found for under $20 (the equivalent, say, to the price of a dozen cans of soup) to a $900 version designed for bar drinks. The lower end of the price spectrum is fine for soup-making.

Soup Stock, A Basic in Making Healthful Homemade Alternative to Canned Soup

Rest assured that when it comes to soup stock, there are no rules and no definitive recipes (although one can find recipes galore). It's almost impossible to make a bad stock. And no, this kind of stock has nothing to do with the financial markets. Indeed, it might be considerably more reliable.

Stock can be made from as few as three ingredients. Celery, onion and carrot are a favorite trio. The more vegetables one uses, the tastier the stock. If it's thin, boil it down for a bit. If it's too thick, add water. If it tastes too strong (which can happen, say, with a turkey carcass or fish heads), then add more vegetables, or water it down. Some cooks save the vitamin-rich water in which their broccoli or spinach has been boiled or steamed, toss in a few more veggies and cook it up into a stock. One can throw away the ingredients after the stock is cooked, leaving only a broth for use in the final soup, or for freezing. Some people blend the vegetable ingredients for a thicker stock. Either way, it's fine.

Stock often doesn't taste like much on its own; it's just background, a kind of dress rehearsal for the actual soup. It can be true that the better the stock, the better the soup — but not necessarily. So don't toss it if it doesn't taste like soup; it's not supposed to. And, of course, the faint of heart can buy stock in a cardboard box, both in health food stores and supermarkets.

Finally, there's one more secret to success in making a homemade soup. Salt. Canned soup fans are used to a taste that can only be achieved with a high dose of sodium with each spoonful. So, if the homemade soup tastes flat, slowly add some salt. (Watch as it pours; it may come as a surprise just how much salt one has to add in order to mimic the taste of canned soup.) Or wean the family off salt by using alternatives like garlic, pepper, bay leaves and spices.

Don't starve the family of soup while the FDA puts in place more stringent rules on Bisphenol A. Love vegetable soup or chicken noodle? It's easy and fun to make at home.

The copyright of the article Avoid Canned Soup with BPA, Make Homemade Soup in Health Field is owned by Ellen Freudenheim. Permission to republish Avoid Canned Soup with BPA, Make Homemade Soup in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.