With the New Year comes the chance to celebrate National Soup Month in January! Though soup is especially popular in cold winter climates, this versatile meal option is enjoyed all over the world. Check out these fun facts you never knew about this popular food:
- Many people believe the first soup was eaten around 6,000 BC and was made of hippopotamus.
- The most expensive bowl of soup commercially available is called Buddha Jumps Over the Wall and costs $190 a bowl. Ingredients include shark’s fin, abalone, Japanese flower mushroom, sea cucumber, dried scallops, chicken, huan ham, pork, and ginseng.
- Americans eat more than 10 billion bowls of soup each year.
- The original Campbell’s Soup flavors were Tomato, Consommé, Vegetable, Chicken, and Oxtail.
- Proper soup etiquette says to tilt the bowl and spoon away from you, sipping, not slurping from the side of the spoon closest to you. Use the soup spoon, the one furthest away from the plate, and never lean over the bowl.
Enjoy a few of those 10 billion bowls with these delicious soup recipes from LDS Living:
Chicken Poblano Soup
This delicious and savory soup won our recipe contest in 2011—and with good reason. Something about this soup is just plain homey. And just plain delicious.
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Creamy Potato Soup
From Wyoming comes our soup contest's first runner up: an amazingly creamy potato soup recipe that will leave your family members asking for seconds (and thirds . . . and fourths)!
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Chicken Cordon Bleu Soup
This spin on a fancy favorite from The Double Dipped Life tastes just like chicken cordon bleu—in liquid form! Ham, cheese, chicken, and potatoes. What's not to like?
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Zucchini Cheese Soup
This is yet another way to be a Zucchini Houdini by using up the harvest from those prolific zucchini plants. This creamy, Southwest soup would make the perfect ending to a chilly winter day.
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Gameday Stew
This easy slow-cooker recipe comes from the wife of LaVell Edwards, BYU Football coach from 1972 to 2000. But even if you don't bleed blue, you'll love this stew!
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This article originally ran on LDS Living in 2014
