Marc

Food manufacturers and marketers work overtime trying to get us to think that home prepared foods are too laborious and not worth the effort. They also work overtime to make us think that we “deserve a break today” and our time is better spend on other things (other “consuming” activities).

There is an omnipresent message that diminishes the value of preparing one’s own food, that insists prepared foods can be equal to or greater for health than real food, and that the perceived time and effort savings is somehow liberating for more valuable pursuits.

It’s hard to resist that message; the lure of instant gratification and re-ordered priorities often wins out. We internalize the marketer’s messages to the point that we can no longer assess what is truly worth the time and effort.

Soup is an excellent example. Soup broth is little more than some meaty bones, perhaps with vegetables, cooked for a long time with little attention and hardly any prep work (I have some simmering right now, as I do every week, with several quarts to show for about 5 minutes’ total effort, perhaps 10 at most). I keep a container in the freezer for collecting bones for broth making (I also keep a container for soup veggies – onion ends, leek tops, extra chopped carrots and celery when I am preparing something else, misc. trimmings, etc.). Simmering broth can be left alone for long periods of time while doing something else, especially with a slow cooker device (very cheap, especially second hand).

From homemade broth, the sky is the limit on effort and time from minimal to maximum soup varieties. Soup with homemade broth can take just minutes if time is short or it can be more elaborate. Frequent preparation also helps to shave time.

A good handheld blender (also called a stick blender) is a quick, very easy way to reduce effort and increase options when soup making. Blending is great for adding ample greens to the diet, without eating a never-ending pile of raw or cooked greens, especially for kids or people with chewing/dental difficulties

Soup making is an especially thrifty way to cook, with the cheapest of bones and meat cuts, as well as a great way to use extra, scrap, or less appealing blemished veggies.

So does homemade soup take too much time to make? Only if one has been convinced it is too time consuming and not worthy of effort. Or convinced that canned soup is equivalent.

Only if one thinks it does.

I find soup to be one of the most time efficient ways of cooking, with a big nutrition payoff for minimal effort and without the additives in commercial soup products.

I guess is it a matter of priorities, though I really think the sense of convenience with ready-to-eat foods is a false savings of time.