Cooking Tips

This month with spring on the way we are looking for fresh ideas for adding nutritional punch to any Frontier Soups mix. Customers can submit their own ideas for inventive variations by replying below or posting them on the Frontier Soups Facebook page.

Winning ideas will be posted here on our recipes blog and receive a free sample of a new product we will be introducing later this year. You will be the first to try it and give us feedback on this new soup supper!

Here’s one healthy cooking variation on the Illinois Prairie Corn Chowder recipe.  Substitute pureed corn, carrots or cauliflower, or mashed potatoes as thickeners instead of cream!  Delish dish!

With the beauty of fall comes the beginning of flu and cold season. You can protect yourself by eating foods that boost your immune system. Plan your family menus with these immune boosting foods that help fight off attacking cold and flu “bugs.”

• Vitamin C: Works by increasing the production of white blood cells, which fight off infection. A good source is orange juice in our Washington State Squash and Lentil Soup or Texas Wrangler Black Bean Soup.
• Vitamin E: Enhances the production of immune cells that produce antibodies that destroy bacteria and is in grains like our Montana High Plains Wheatberry Chili
• Beta Carotene: Works by increasing the number of infection fighting cells and is in sweet potatoes like in our California Gold Rush White Bean Chili.
• Zinc: Studies have shown that a zinc deficiency can impair a number of white blood cells. Zinc is in beef, lentils, garbanzos, as in our Dakota Beef Barley Bean, Hungarian Goulash, Indiana Harvest Sausage Lentil, Italian Wedding Soup and New Mexico Mesa Spicy Fiesta Soup.

For more information on top ranked flu fighter foods visit Truestar Health.

When in doubt, use lemon juice. If you’re on a low sodium diet or just looking for a quick flavor enhancer, add a tablespoon of lemon juice to finish your pot of soup to brighten the flavor without salt! Or, sprinkle on your salad and use less dressing! Soup mixes from Frontier Soups contain no added salt.

Make a delicious pot of homemade soup from Frontier Soups and freeze the leftovers in double ziploc sandwich bags for a handy and healthy take-to-work lunch!

To expand the Italian Wedding Soup to feed a family of four or more, simply add 2-3 cups more broth and add 1/4 pound more turkey sausage to the meat ball mixture.

Use your New Year’s ham bone and make Nebraska Barnraising Green Pea Soup or Minnesota Heartland 11-Bean Soup.

Feed your family or a crowd, or freeze half of the soup and have another easy meal ready to go on the stove a few weeks later.

A little bit of chicken goes a long way in a potful of soup!

Try only one split breast in our Wisconsin Lakeshore Wild Rice Soup or Oregon Lakes Wild Rice and Mushroom Soup for a satisfying supper for four to six.

Despite its hardy exterior, corn is quite prone to deterioration. If handled improperly, even the sweetest kernels can lose their succulence in just two days. Fresh is most certainly the best! Here are some things to keep in mind when stalking perfect corn.

1. Keep it cool: heat and dehydration make sugar turn to starch. Look for ears that are cool to the touch, and store them in the fridge.
2. Green is good; tender, slightly damp green husks are nature’s moisture seal. Avoid ears of corn with yellow exteriors that look dried out.
3. Pleasantly plump: Full, firm kernels are signs of freshness. Simply squeeze an ear through its protective husk rather than tearing the layer off and exposing the kernels to the air. If the only corn available has already been husked, avoid kernels that are hard or dimpled.
4. Fringe benefits; Tassels should be golden brown and slightly sticky. Pale tassels indicate that the corn was picked too early. Black tassels mean it’s old.

What about husking that fresh corn? Do there seem to be hundreds of corn silks to get rid of? There are, in fact, as many corn silk as kernels of corn on the cob. But the fresher the corn, the easier it is to husk it. The sticky silk is only troublesome on corn that’s a couple days or more old.

Our hunting family customers have the following suggestions:

• Try venison meat in our Dakota Territory Beef Barley Bean Stew.
• Try venison sausage in the Indiana Harvest Sausage Lentil Soup.
• Try ground venison in Michigan Ski Country Chili.
• Make venison meatloaf with the Pennsylvania Woodlands Mushroom Barley Soup.
• Or, if it’s birds in your freezer, try duck in the Wisconsin Lakeshore Wild Rice Soup and in the Louisiana Red Bean Gumbo, or quail in the Midwest Weekend Cincinnati Chili!