Making delicious plant-based food and helping to create a more sustainable food system is at the core of what we do at Thistle. We take this to heart in everything we do, especially our soups.
Meal deliveries help customers reduce food waste in their kitchens by up to 85% (that’s a lot!), and we are always looking for ways to do the same in our kitchen at Thistle.
How many times have you looked into your refrigerator and seen some kale or broccoli in the back just waiting for the compost bin?? You know, that look that says, “Hey, what are you going to do with me?” One easy trick for home cooks is to take those vegetables and, instead of letting them go to waste, turn them into soup! Well, we did the same thing in our kitchen - we found a delicious way to use excess food ingredients by incorporating leftover ingredients into wholesome and nutritious plant-based soups.
Our Soup-er Soups
After months of recipe development, testing, and refining, the Culinary R&D team developed four core delicious soups that would be flexible with swapping in different ingredients:
Italian Minestrone
A hearty Italian soup made with fire-roasted tomatoes, sauteed veggies and savory herbs.
Favorite add-ins: seasonal squash, kidney beans, cannellini beans, roasted sweet potatoes, fresh greens, roasted cauliflower & quinoa pilaf
Thai Carrot Squash Soup
A rich, silky puree of carrots and fall squash, brought to life with a bright dose of lemongrass, ginger and lime.
Favorite add-ins: Sauteed mushrooms & bok choy, roasted broccoli, black forbidden rice, green peas, lentils & fresh greens
Chile Verde
A zesty tomatillo green chile and green chile broth seasoned with smoked paprika, oregano and cumin
Favorite add-ins: Black beans, roasted sweet potato, roasted broccoli, brown rice, quinoa, pinto beans & fresh greens
Sweet Potato Corn Chowder
A rich, flavorful chowder with a corn and sweet potato base, brought to life with roasted jalapenos, cumin and lime juice.
Favorite add-ins: Black beans, mushroom, quinoa, roasted squash, cauliflower, pinto beans, lentils & roasted potatoes
Getting the Recipe Right
How do we make this all happen? It’s one thing when you’re in your own kitchen and you’re cooking for yourself, your family, or roommates, but it gets a little more complicated when you’re looking at making an 800 pound batch of soup. Here’s what we do:
- Planning for soups: Each week, before we start making meals for the next week, the R&D team scours the upcoming menu to look for potential ingredients to incorporate into our soups. There are lots of things we look at, when deciding if a certain ingredient will make it into one of our soups:
- Flavor: What will this add to the soup? Will it taste good mixed with the other ingredients?
- Allergens: We make sure that the ingredient doesn’t contain any of the most common allergens, including soy, coconut, tree nuts, etc.
- Nutritional considerations: For each 12oz serving of soup, one can expect between 150-250 calories and at least 5-10 grams of protein. Depending on what we have left over, it can be quite a puzzle to meet those metrics, but luckily our menus are loaded with protein-packed plant-based ingredients such as beans, lentils, quinoa, and pea protein crumbles.
- Choosing the right ingredients: Once our teams have made all the meals and packed every bag (no small feat!), they report back the weight of any leftover recipes that were designated by the R&D team to save for soup. From there, it’s the R&D team’s job to determine what goes into the batch of soup while making sure the overall nutrition of the serving of soup meets our requirements. We look at the nutrition for each soup, increasing and decreasing ingredients until everything checks out, and then we send the unique ingredient list and nutrition label over to our labeling team, who create a custom label for this specific batch of soup.
A lot of thought and work goes into our soups, which change from week to week. We are proud of the fact that our unique soup process diverts tens of thousands of pounds of excess food ingredients into our delicious and nutrient-rich soups. In fact, in 2021, we diverted 24,000 pounds of excess food ingredients into our soups. And in 2022, we’ve repurposed 21,959 pounds of excess food ingredients into our soups. We think that’s pretty soup-er.
Making delicious plant-based food and helping to create a more sustainable food system is at the core of what we do at Thistle. We take this to heart in everything we do, especially our soups.
Meal deliveries help customers reduce food waste in their kitchens by up to 85% (that’s a lot!), and we are always looking for ways to do the same in our kitchen at Thistle.
How many times have you looked into your refrigerator and seen some kale or broccoli in the back just waiting for the compost bin?? You know, that look that says, “Hey, what are you going to do with me?” One easy trick for home cooks is to take those vegetables and, instead of letting them go to waste, turn them into soup! Well, we did the same thing in our kitchen - we found a delicious way to use excess food ingredients by incorporating leftover ingredients into wholesome and nutritious plant-based soups.
Our Soup-er Soups
After months of recipe development, testing, and refining, the Culinary R&D team developed four core delicious soups that would be flexible with swapping in different ingredients:
Italian Minestrone
A hearty Italian soup made with fire-roasted tomatoes, sauteed veggies and savory herbs.
Favorite add-ins: seasonal squash, kidney beans, cannellini beans, roasted sweet potatoes, fresh greens, roasted cauliflower & quinoa pilaf
Thai Carrot Squash Soup
A rich, silky puree of carrots and fall squash, brought to life with a bright dose of lemongrass, ginger and lime.
Favorite add-ins: Sauteed mushrooms & bok choy, roasted broccoli, black forbidden rice, green peas, lentils & fresh greens
Chile Verde
A zesty tomatillo green chile and green chile broth seasoned with smoked paprika, oregano and cumin
Favorite add-ins: Black beans, roasted sweet potato, roasted broccoli, brown rice, quinoa, pinto beans & fresh greens
Sweet Potato Corn Chowder
A rich, flavorful chowder with a corn and sweet potato base, brought to life with roasted jalapenos, cumin and lime juice.
Favorite add-ins: Black beans, mushroom, quinoa, roasted squash, cauliflower, pinto beans, lentils & roasted potatoes
Getting the Recipe Right
How do we make this all happen? It’s one thing when you’re in your own kitchen and you’re cooking for yourself, your family, or roommates, but it gets a little more complicated when you’re looking at making an 800 pound batch of soup. Here’s what we do:
- Planning for soups: Each week, before we start making meals for the next week, the R&D team scours the upcoming menu to look for potential ingredients to incorporate into our soups. There are lots of things we look at, when deciding if a certain ingredient will make it into one of our soups:
- Flavor: What will this add to the soup? Will it taste good mixed with the other ingredients?
- Allergens: We make sure that the ingredient doesn’t contain any of the most common allergens, including soy, coconut, tree nuts, etc.
- Nutritional considerations: For each 12oz serving of soup, one can expect between 150-250 calories and at least 5-10 grams of protein. Depending on what we have left over, it can be quite a puzzle to meet those metrics, but luckily our menus are loaded with protein-packed plant-based ingredients such as beans, lentils, quinoa, and pea protein crumbles.
- Choosing the right ingredients: Once our teams have made all the meals and packed every bag (no small feat!), they report back the weight of any leftover recipes that were designated by the R&D team to save for soup. From there, it’s the R&D team’s job to determine what goes into the batch of soup while making sure the overall nutrition of the serving of soup meets our requirements. We look at the nutrition for each soup, increasing and decreasing ingredients until everything checks out, and then we send the unique ingredient list and nutrition label over to our labeling team, who create a custom label for this specific batch of soup.
A lot of thought and work goes into our soups, which change from week to week. We are proud of the fact that our unique soup process diverts tens of thousands of pounds of excess food ingredients into our delicious and nutrient-rich soups. In fact, in 2021, we diverted 24,000 pounds of excess food ingredients into our soups. And in 2022, we’ve repurposed 21,959 pounds of excess food ingredients into our soups. We think that’s pretty soup-er.
