#118: SNACKABLES with Rip and Brenda Reed - 'Tis the Season - Great Ideas to Elevate and Enhance Your Soups

 

Chef Brenda at work in the kitchen

Welcome to PLANTSTRONG Snackables, a bite-sized podcast where host, Rip Esselstyn dishes on all things plants!

Today's guest is Brenda Reed, longtime PLANTSTRONG Team Member and in-house culinary expert for PLANTSTRONG foods and events.

Brenda is responsible for many of the recipes at our live events and on the PLANTSTRONG Meal Planner. Today, she and Rip talk soups and, specifically, how to elevate your own cooking and flavor profile with our new broths and soups. 

Key Takeaways:

  • Origins of the word, “soup”

  • 3 Principles of Building Your Soups

  • Brenda and Rip's Go-To Soups for Family and Friends

  • How Chef Brenda Used our new PLANTSTRONG Broths to Create Recipes for Every Taste and Cuisine

  • How to Download Free Recipes on All of our Broth Boxes with the QR Code

  • Some of Brenda's Favorite "Sparks" to Level Up the Health and Flavor Profile

  • Through November — $1.00

'Tis the season for soups and PLANTSTRONG is here to help you create tasty, nutritious, and filling meals for you and your loved ones.

Episode Resources

Full YouTube Transcript

Rip Esselstyn:

Hey, everyone. Welcome to another episode of Snackables, where we chew on all things related to food, specifically plant-based foods. Now, this is not Jessica, is it? This is also not Ami Mackey. And as you know, Jessica Haggerty is on maternity leave. She and her husband, Evan, had a little baby girl ...

Brenda Reed:

Girl.

Rip Esselstyn:

... named Ellie. We're so excited for them. And so she'll be on maternity leave for about another two months. On our last episode, we had Ami Mackey who's been part of the PLANTSTRONG team for, gosh, probably seven years or so and we chewed on all things related to building bowls and how easy that can be building these no-recipe recipe bowls. Today, I want to introduce you to a very special person who's actually been with me longer than anyone else. This is Brenda Reed.

Brenda Reed:

Hi, Rip.

Rip Esselstyn:

Hi, Brenda. Thank you so much for coming over.

Brenda Reed:

Yeah, thanks for having me.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. And Brenda, gosh, we first met... She went to culinary school here, correct?

Brenda Reed:

Correct. Yep.

Rip Esselstyn:

And what was the name of the school?

Brenda Reed:

It was the Natural Epicurean.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah, the Natural Epicurean, and we were doing an event. It's actually the event where Ami Mackey came for the first time.

Brenda Reed:

It is.

Rip Esselstyn:

And it's over on the east side. It's a farm. Can you remember the name of the farm?

Brenda Reed:

Yeah, Boggy Creek Farms.

Rip Esselstyn:

Boggy Creek Farms. And you actually were part of the culinary team.

Brenda Reed:

I was. It was amazing.

Rip Esselstyn:

And that was your first foray into kind of being part of the PLANTSTRONG team, and now you are, I mean for the last almost decade, you've been our head chef at all of our retreats.

Brenda Reed:

I have. That's true.

Rip Esselstyn:

And so you've become miraculous at problem solving, at figuring out how to make this, this, and this when you don't have this, this, and that. And we all believe that you are a miracle worker.

Brenda Reed:

Aw. Thanks, Rip.

Rip Esselstyn:

So it's really appropriate that we have you on the show today and our listeners get to meet you, and how you can give them some simple, I think, tips to elevate and enhance their cooking at home, especially as we head into the holidays. So with Thanksgiving right around the corner, do you have any plans?

Brenda Reed:

Oh, actually, I do. We are headed to Holbox, Mexico. There are 32 of us all on the same flight out of Austin on next Saturday morning, 6:00 AM.

Rip Esselstyn:

Wow.

Brenda Reed:

Yeah.

Rip Esselstyn:

I can officially say I am jealous.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, I'm so excited. We've been waiting for this forever. I turned 50 last February or this past February. So this is my 50th birthday trip with some family and friends.

Rip Esselstyn:

Well, I'm super excited for you and I'm sure it's going to be well deserved.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, it's going to be amazing.

Rip Esselstyn:

Wow.

Brenda Reed:

There are 12 kids under 12 going to be with us as well.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah, yeah.

Brenda Reed:

Should be fun.

Rip Esselstyn:

Never a dull moment. Well, we are picking up and we're going to fly to Cleveland and we're going to be with my parents Ann and Essy for about a week. And then right next door to Ann and Essy lives my sister Jane and her husband, Brian Hart, and then their three kids, that are now, they're out of the house in college, but they'll be coming back. So it'll be really fun. And my kids love hanging out with their cousins and we probably go to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. And if I can score tickets, maybe a Cleveland Browns football game. And then maybe the Natural History Museum, things like that.

Brenda Reed:

Well, if I can, I'm going to try to hang in a hammock on the beach, perhaps swim in the ocean and right out of my hotel room. There's only 15 rooms at the actual place. So I think we're occupying 12 of them.

Rip Esselstyn:

All right. I need a full report when you get back.

Brenda Reed:

Absolutely, lifetime trip. So excited about it.

Rip Esselstyn:

Oh my gosh. Well, so let's talk, let's just dive into, so the weather's turning and starting to get cold. We're approaching the holiday season. And so I thought it would be wonderful if we talked all things soups.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, amazing. I love soup.

Rip Esselstyn:

I love soup too. To me, it's like a warm hug. And there's nothing as comforting and delicious and soothing as a good soup. So let's just jump right in. I think it can help you, people live more plants strong when you're consistently making a good soup.

Brenda Reed:

I think so.

Rip Esselstyn:

I think I'll just ask you, so do you have a favorite soup that you like to make or do you have a key when it comes to soups or?

Brenda Reed:

I do. I do have a favorite soup. It's a kabocha like a squash soup or kabocha, people say it all different ways. I say kabocha because it sounds cool. But yeah, I love to work with squashes and soups, definitely. They are plentiful this time of year and wonderful. And I don't know if you know the origin of soup though. Have you ever thought about where soup, how it was created? How it came along?

Rip Esselstyn:

Oh, I think about it all the time. I had a dream about it last night? No. Will you please share with me?

Brenda Reed:

Oh, absolutely. I will please share with you. So the etymology of the word soup actually has like German roots, they first think, and it was basically sop, like sop, and it was basically to consume liquid. And then somewhere along the line, it took a little turn and it hopped over into what's Latin, that language, that from a long time ago and it became like supper and it was mostly like, that's how supper became created. But at that time it was like, people didn't really have spoons and they weren't necessarily drinking the soups so they used it as consuming liquid with bread. And so you dunked the bread in there and then eat the soup. And then at some point, of course the French, they picked it up and it became like soaking bread and liquid really hearty let's eat it type of thing. So that's the origin of it. And then when it became to us, it was supper, sup, soup. And people think of soup in all sorts of ways. I got to know. Do you like thick soup, thin soup, chunky soup?

Rip Esselstyn:

I can't stand a thin soup. I need something that's got a lot of heart. It's like you can float a spoon on top of it. Yeah. Yeah. I like stews, chilies, hearty soups, for sure.

Brenda Reed:

And we do have some good stews and chilies out there on the PLANTSTRONG family. I can tell you, I got counted off on my soup in culinary school because it was too thick. Because at that time it was supposed to be lifted from the bowl and you turn the spoon and it's supposed to run off nicely and mine was a little too thick.

Rip Esselstyn:

Well, I'd be okay with a thinner soup. I just don't like a broth, just a real brothy like a ramen soup or something like that.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, interesting. Oh, I love ramen type soups.

Rip Esselstyn:

Unless it's a banging bok choy. And then I do love those.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, yes, yes. We should talk about that one in a little bit.

Rip Esselstyn:

Let's talk about that in a little bit.

Brenda Reed:

Well, as far as some techniques I have, I kind of think of like three principles when I'm going to create a soup. The first one I think of is what's the consistency going to be, yours is going to be thick. Mine's not going to be too thin, but it's going to be kind of somewhere in the middle depending on what I'm doing. And then I think, well, what are my key ingredients? Because you can do anything with soup. You don't even need a recipe. You can just put whatever the heck you want in it. And then I think about the preparation method and oftentimes people think about like a soup or a stew cooking all day long and making those aroma in the house. And that is great. But then from what I gathered from Ami's talk with you a while back, easy and simple. And there are some really easy and simple ways to just do soups and stews and not even think much about them. Sometimes where you just roast everything in the oven and then ladle out a little bit of broth and just blend and it's ready to go. So it doesn't have to complicate.

Rip Esselstyn:

It sounds like, and I think I learned this in talking to either Chad Sarno or Derek Sarno when I had them in the podcast.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, they're wonderful. Oh yeah.

Rip Esselstyn:

And they talked about how you just want to have all these different kind of layers of flavors and roasting and caramelizing and toasting really helps give that.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, absolutely. When you can get things, you can get aromatics, so onions and garlic going in the pot. If you have like a little crockpot or something that you cook in or a little Dutch oven, get those going like on that really hot flame. And then just add a little water and deglaze it. Right there you already have a nice little base that's going to add that caramelization layer piece. Then you just add water and add vegetables and you just let it go for a while. And I think one of the things people always wonder is how much liquid do I put in it. And it really just depends on what the heck are you going to do with it, is it going to be thick and chunky or somewhere in the middle or super runny.

Brenda Reed:

And basically I always just let my vegetables go and then I cover the liquid to the top of the vegetables for a while and then just simmer them if I'm just making some sort of simple vegetable soup or I get my kabocha squash cut up. And one of the key things too, I think people need to do in the preparation is think about the vegetable, is it going to break apart really quickly? Or is it going to take a longer time to cook? And if it's going to take a longer time to cook, you definitely want to make smaller chunks or dices. And if it's going to break apart, you can leave those a little bigger, like some half moons.

Rip Esselstyn:

So give me an example of some vegetables that break apart easily and others that take longer.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, yeah. Yellow squash, zucchini, they break apart really easily. The longer ones are going to be your harder winter squashes, the pumpkins, the kabocha squash, the butternut squash. Oh, do you peel your squash if you're going to make a soup? Like your butternut or kabocha?

Rip Esselstyn:

Yes, I do.

Brenda Reed:

You do. Okay.

Rip Esselstyn:

Is that a miss?

Brenda Reed:

No. No. Do you cut yourself when you peel? Or is it hard?

Rip Esselstyn:

Not lately.

Brenda Reed:

Have you ever cut yourself when you peel?

Rip Esselstyn:

Sure, absolutely.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, me too. I recently stopped peeling my squashes. And especially if you get a big old kabocha squash, right? Have you seen one?

Rip Esselstyn:

Oh yeah.

Brenda Reed:

They're like a green, like pumpkin kind of thing. So have you tried to peel one of those?

Rip Esselstyn:

No, I can't say I have.

Brenda Reed:

Yeah. And then you got to cut it and you're hacking it and you just really want to be careful in the kitchen. You don't want to make this amazing soup for your family and then have your hands all bandaged up. So I've recently just really taken to cutting the squash, the kabocha, the harder winter ones, and then roasting them and just getting them a little moisture putting them on some parchment paper on 400, seasoning them up. If you put a little water on them first or if you want to do some sort of tamari, low sodium tamari or something, you just need them to be a little bit damp when you go to put the seasoning on them if you're going to put them on parchment paper and straight into the oven, otherwise they're going to dry out really fast. So you want those pieces to be small so that if you are going to blend them later, they'll blend up nicely. But if you're going to take the skin off after you roast them, then you can just peel the skin off. Get them into the pot, put your liquid in and get them going.

Rip Esselstyn:

That's a great, I don't want to call it trick, but it's a great technique. So you don't have to like try and peel that crazy skin off when it's not cooked.

Brenda Reed:

And you could eat the skin. The problem is if you don't want your soup to be green like the color of the skin. You might want to take it off, but you could eat the skin.

Rip Esselstyn:

So that's great. Let me ask you this and then I want to chime in. Do you have like a favorite soup that you make? Like, I don't know, every week or every couple of weeks.

Brenda Reed:

Well, you know how you spoke of the Sarno brothers? So that Boggy Creek Farm event, Derek Sarno was actually the lead on that. So when I was in culinary school getting my externship hours, I got to see how he moves and shakes. So I'm a huge fan of the Sarno brothers and I definitely think they have some amazing techniques and they have a take that's really, really good on like a corn chowder or potato with corn chowder. That is my go-to all the time. All the time. And you Rip have actually convinced me that it is okay to use frozen vegetables and frozen grains. Oh my gosh. They're actually good.

Rip Esselstyn:

Well, it's funny, you talk of that corn chowder, I guess potato corn chowder. But actually it's in the Whole Foods cookbook that actually, I think it was Chad, helped with the recipes in it. And I was having dinner over at John Mackey's house and he actually served that one night and I think I went back for fours. It was so good.

Brenda Reed:

Oh yeah. I eat at least four to five bowls in one setting. And I don't know if you know this, but there is a grocery chain store out there that sells a fire roasted corn, frozen corn.

Rip Esselstyn:

Oh yes. That's Trader Joe's, right?

Brenda Reed:

Yeah. That one. It's so good.

Rip Esselstyn:

You know, I love getting it. It's just that fire roasted corn gives it so much flavor.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, it does.

Rip Esselstyn:

Fire roasted anything helps.

Brenda Reed:

Fire roasted anything is great.

Rip Esselstyn:

But especially corn, it's so versatile. So it's interesting. So when I graduated from the University of Texas at Austin, I immediately started to cook because I wasn't eating on the athletic training table any longer. And I would say that for the next 10 years, while I was a bachelor and a triathlete, I would rotate between three different soups that I would make one every week and I make a huge batch and it would last me for a couple days. And that's one of the things I love about soup. Is how you make it and then you can have it for leftovers, you can freeze it, you can add ingredients to it and change it up a little bit. You can put on top of green leafies, different grains. It's wonderful.

Rip Esselstyn:

So I would rotate between just a three bean chili, I just love a good chili, just a split pea soup with just all the potatoes, onions, garlic, and then a red lentil soup, those three. Just simple soups that me who wasn't much of a cook would rotate through. And now I'm starting to up my game a little bit. And when I wrote the Engine 2 Diet, which was the first book, had a bunch of soups in there. And do you have a soup that you love making when you have company over like for the Super Bowl? Or something like that.

Brenda Reed:

I'm going to say a go-to is going to be a chili, more like a stew. Just because it's hearty, you can put a ton of vegetables in it and I let it go all day. I mean, low and slow. Because then all the spices and the flavors really start to meld and then you come out on top with just something really wonderful like a little sourdough or some cornbread or something. Oh yeah. I would say chili, chili is the bomb.

Rip Esselstyn:

And with every one of my soups, I always usually toast one or two pieces of whole grain bread. And then I dip it in the soup almost like it's a spoon. Try and take my time so I don't go through the bread too fast.

Brenda Reed:

Medieval times.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yes, yes. Yeah. I think that, the soup that I love when we have company coming over, actually I think my wife Jill actually adores it more than I do, but it's the Mexican lime soup from the Engine 2 Diet. And it really pairs well with the vegetable broth. And basically it's onions, garlic, red potatoes, mushrooms, like five different poblano peppers which you have to roast them first and de-seed and then it's corn on the cob, but actually it's not corn off the cob. You just cut up ...

Brenda Reed:

Like the frozen ones.

Rip Esselstyn:

Well, I don't know if I've ever gotten frozen corn.

Brenda Reed:

They're not as good. They're not as good.

Rip Esselstyn:

I think it's important that the corn be fresh. Slice up that, let it all those flavors meld together for a while and then you take it out and then you put on top of it cilantro, a squeeze of lemon, tomatoes, freshly cut avocado, and then if you want to we bake our own chips from corn tortillas and that is just divine.

Brenda Reed:

Oh yeah. That sounds amazing.

Rip Esselstyn:

Absolutely love it.

Brenda Reed:

Did you make some for us?

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. Carrie good afternoon.

Brenda Reed:

Sounds great everyone. Speaking of all your soups in that one, I wanted to kind of go back to your red lentil one that you did in college, because I think for the listeners out there that is such a quick and simple soup. When we were talking about things that break apart quickly, red lentils. You're not having to sort and soak and do all those things that you might do with brown or green lentils. So you could just do some onion and a garlic base, again caramelize it, de-glaze it, put the red lentils in and then choose your spice what you want to do. Do you remember what you used to season yours with in college?

Rip Esselstyn:

I mean, it was just the basics. I mean, back then, it was just salt and pepper, maybe like red chili flakes.

Brenda Reed:

Yeah. It takes very little for red lentils. And they're so healthy and they're just right up there on top. And then when I think about like a red lentil or something like that, I might take a Yukon gold potato and put it on top of that, almost it was a chili. And then I always, I don't know how you feel about arugula ...

Rip Esselstyn:

I adore arugula.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, me too. That's peppery.

Rip Esselstyn:

It's a pirate's favorite green leafy. Arugula.

Brenda Reed:

Oh really? I'll have to tell that to my son tonight. Yes. He's five. And he hasn't quite gotten the concept of jokes yet, so I'll have to help him out for sure. But I serve it with arugula and a baby kale type of little thing, some little shaved red onion and a little tomato on it. It's a great accoutrement to the red lentils, little balsamic vinegar.

Rip Esselstyn:

So I want you all to know that I trust, we on the whole PLANTSTRONG team, we trust this woman so much that we actually tasked her with taking all of our new veggie broths. So the slow simmered vegetable, the shiitake mushroom, the Spanish style sofrito and what am I missing?

Brenda Reed:

Yes, I was listening. Was it the shiitake mushroom?

Rip Esselstyn:

No, no.

Brenda Reed:

Sofrito. The corn, the corn.

Rip Esselstyn:

The sweet corn.

Brenda Reed:

You love corn.

Rip Esselstyn:

We love corn and the sweet corn and tasked you with basically, because they're so versatile, they can just enhance and elevate so many different recipes, but specifically coming up with a really kick-ass recipe using these broths that people can make. And I'd love it if you would just talk maybe about one or two of the recipes.

Brenda Reed:

Yeah. Well, first of all, I want to say thanks because that was a really fun task that I was super intimidated by at first. And you might think why, if you're back in the kitchen preparing from 100 to 800, because we don't really use recipes in the back of the house. We use the intuition or just this looks good, or this is what we have. And so when it came down to the specifics of writing a recipe that could serve four to six or six to eight, it really made me think, then I realized I enjoyed it. And I realized it only took about a week to come up with four of them and then kind of test them and it was a really cool concept. I think the two that struck, well, I want to mention all four of them real quick and then I'll get into one of them but I thought what was amazing was if you've tried the broth, I wanted to speak specifically to the broth as the component of why a broth is a broth.

Brenda Reed:

So broths are kind of already have an elevated flavor profile to them because traditionally they came off of stock. You'd kind of slop off the stock that had been simmering on the low flame all day long, because the stock was just something that was reserved and kept over a flame and going and going for your lifetime back in the day. But we don't have that luxury anymore. So a broth is more enhanced and more refined and more flavorful and you can often maybe even sip it. So with the sofrito broth, I wanted to actually go for a paella and I mean I've traveled to Spain and had paella before and it's amazing and a lot of paella obviously is like animal things that swim in the sea and stuff that we don't eat.

Brenda Reed:

So I was like, we got to have a veggie paella. So I kind of took on that task and I do not like green peas, I don't like them. So I put chickpeas in it. But I will say that that sofrito broth and that paella is a little intricate. It takes a little bit of time because you want to go like a longer, slow and low. So it might be a great holiday preparation. If you want to have a paella is one of your guest dishes. But the one I really want to talk about today is so simple. Our shiitake mushroom broth stands alone. It is so good. And it was so easy just to take that shiitake mushroom and turn it into your favorite kind of soups ramen and pho (FU) or pho (FO) please, excuse me, choose how you say it. But, but Rip, I got to ask you. Why do you not like that kind of soup?

Rip Esselstyn:

I think it's probably because whenever I've gone to like a fire restaurant, it's just so salty. And I just find that I'm drinking water, I'm drying up.

Brenda Reed:

A gallon.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Brenda Reed:

How do we not make it salty?

Rip Esselstyn:

Well, and we know that actually this mushroom broth only has 20 milligrams of sodium per serving. So that's pretty darn good.

Brenda Reed:

Oh yeah. It's so standalone. So this mushroom broth, well, I get it. So one of the main differences between ramen and pho is that pho is typically a rice noodle and the ramen is typically a wheat noodle. And then you can go back, is it China or Japan? You can go back through all these origins. But the thing about it is, it's quick and easy. So the mushroom broth, have you ever heard of star anise?

Rip Esselstyn:

Star anise, I've heard of anise? I don't know what the first thing you said, the star?

Brenda Reed:

Star, like star light, star bright.

Rip Esselstyn:

Star anise.

Brenda Reed:

Star anise I put in my broth tonight.

Rip Esselstyn:

You have to help me.

Brenda Reed:

So it has more of like a licorice, like a little bit of a licorice flavor. Actually, do you have a box of the shiitake mushroom broth?

Rip Esselstyn:

I do. I do.

Brenda Reed:

Is it handy?

Rip Esselstyn:

I can grab it because I have them all right here. Yes. Right here.

Brenda Reed:

Because on the back of this, there's a QR code.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. Little QR code. If you don't know what a QR code is, it's actually this little kind of like, what does it almost look like to you?

Brenda Reed:

Oh, it's like a circle with an alien.

Rip Esselstyn:

Circle with an alien. And then you just put your phone on camera mode, don't have to click anything. You hold it up and then it basically will then spit out a link and then you click the link and then it takes you right to ...

Brenda Reed:

The banging bok choy noodle soup. You know, what's interesting. I thought all QR codes had to be square, so they're not. So you're looking on the back of that box for a little round spaceship thing. So the broth, all I did was I wanted to have more of a kind of flavor. So I put star anise in it. And I guess if you don't have any, you could just throw licorice in it, but why would any of our listeners have licorice? Yes. Probably not. Well, anyway, so it gave it a little bit of flavor and just whole garlic cloves and just get it simmering around in the broth for a while and lifting out the star anise but the highlights of this were lots of cremini mushrooms, just all chopped up, and like baby bok choy like, full on big baby bok choy things. And then the ramen I chose to use, because I actually wanted it to be a rice noodle but it's called ramen, and the Lotus Foods ramen that we use, I'm going to actually, you know what, it's kind of crazy.

Rip Esselstyn:

And you like this cut because you actually do gluten free, right?

Brenda Reed:

Well some I do, but mostly now I'm trying to eat more gluten in my life, but there's this brand out here called Lotus foods and they have, they call them rice ramen and they come in like this brick right here. And this takes about four minutes to soften and cook up. And it's going to tell you to cook it separately from the package. I don't want another pot. I want one pot. So I've got my broth going, take out my star anise, leave the garlic in there, maybe even roast it and then throw this in there and let it get going and break it all up. Then I'll just throw the bok choy in, the mushrooms, grate ginger, not like great ginger but grate ginger. Do you use ginger at all in your cooking? I got some ginger here.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yes. I make a lot of sauces with it.

Brenda Reed:

So if you're not familiar with ginger, they come in like fingers and really what I do is I pull it off and you might be catchy in this about me, but I don't like to use a lot of extra things and I actually don't like to cut the skin off things. So what I do is I just take the ginger with the skin on, I do not peel it and I just grade it all right into there.

Rip Esselstyn:

Skin and all.

Brenda Reed:

Skin and all and the skin might get stuck in there. It might be here clumpy a little bit, but it doesn't matter. I figure it's extra like microbiome organism things for your body.

Rip Esselstyn:

We want every type of fiber we can get. Feed these little guys.

Brenda Reed:

Yeah. And I put copious amounts of ginger in, probably more than the recipe calls for because it's anti-inflammatory, it's so great. And then honestly, I think the key to this recipe is the condiments. We call them sparks, right? Is that what I heard?

Rip Esselstyn:

Sparks, yeah.

Brenda Reed:

Sparks are things that elevate the flavor. So for me, elevating the flavor at the end of this dish is really, really important. So have you ever used furikake?

Rip Esselstyn:

Furikake, no, and it sounds nasty, but I'd love to hear about it.

Brenda Reed:

It's basically...

Rip Esselstyn:

Furikake, it actually sounds kind of like nasty.

Brenda Reed:

It's actually sesame seeds, Nori and a little bit of salt.

Rip Esselstyn:

That sounds wonderful.

Brenda Reed:

Black and white sesame seeds.

Rip Esselstyn:

Never judge anything by it's name.

Brenda Reed:

You should never judge anything. A little bit of kelp powder, which gives the iodine. And so sprinkle this on top. It's really good. Actually, my son loves to just open this up, shout out to Langston, put a little bit.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. I bet you Simon Hill would approve of this as far as getting your iodine.

Brenda Reed:

There you go. Oh, it's amazing. Oh yeah, your iodine. Absolutely. Think about that all the time.

Rip Esselstyn:

That is nice.

Brenda Reed:

Isn't that nice? So this is it right here. I don't know. This is my first time to showcase this amazing bowl. And then I know we're big on vinegar, right? And vinegar with our greens. Have you heard of this? Can you say it?

Rip Esselstyn:

Yuzu.

Brenda Reed:

No yuzu.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yuzu.

Brenda Reed:

No yuzu. I don't even know what a yuzu is, but it's really good.

Rip Esselstyn:

Sounds like a car.

Brenda Reed:

Yeah. Maybe we should get a fleet. It's vinegar. So like vinegar in a lemony citrus kind of way and chili pepper. So it's like sweet and spicy like our sweet fire salad dressing that we use. So again, these are small amounts because they are condiments, they might add a little extra sodium in there, but they're great. Or you can just go with, I know that you love, aren't you a sriracha kind of guy.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah, yeah. I like srirahcha.

Brenda Reed:

Sriracha. In fact actually I do the whole Sarno red squirrel thing in there. I put everything imaginable in my noodle broth soups at the end to give them as much flavor as possible.

Rip Esselstyn:

That's interesting. This says simultaneously spicy and citrusy.

Brenda Reed:

It's really true. And you know what? I'm not going to lie. Had it on my greens this morning.

Rip Esselstyn:

Wow. Well I applaud you for having greens ...

Brenda Reed:

Thank you.

Rip Esselstyn:

... in the morning.

Brenda Reed:

I hear they're important.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yes. You know that. So can I tell you about a dish I made last night?

Brenda Reed:

Yeah, please do.

Rip Esselstyn:

So we sent out a newsletter yesterday and it was basically four different recipes using sweet potatoes. And one of them was this recipe that we got from Pam Croft who's like the vegan trail mama. And she submitted this recipe, it's called sweet potato curry. And you make it in an Instapot and it takes eight minutes. And it's got five ingredients. So listeners, either go back and pull up the newsletter or take copious notes right now because I'm just going to tell you quickly. So we don't have an Instapot. We need to get one, I think. We have a crockpot. So instead of taking eight minutes, it took us four hours. It's like, whoa. Is that even fair?

Brenda Reed:

It is. And I'll tell you why later.

Rip Esselstyn:

Okay. Okay, good. So five ingredients and this is what you start with the oat milk. And I'm not going to give you quantities right now, but you start with like throw in the oat milk. Then you throw in Thai red curry paste and I was like, oh my God, do we even have that in the house? And she's like yeah let's look and we found some in the refrigerator. Guess what the best buy date was?

Brenda Reed:

Oh, like 2018?

Rip Esselstyn:

January 2012.

Brenda Reed:

Oh.

Rip Esselstyn:

January 2012. But guess what? We used it and it was fine. So then we mixed that in and we stirred that up. Then we threw in three sweet potatoes that were de-skinned and then we cube them and threw that in there. So it's kind of layered. And then we threw in two cans of chickpeas.

Brenda Reed:

Oh amazing.

Rip Esselstyn:

And then we threw in like a couple handfuls of chopped kale and then you just close the lid and I'm telling you it was so delicious, creamy, wonderful and everybody in the house loved it.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, I'm loving it right now. I'm coming over. I'll go there now.

Rip Esselstyn:

So what was the thing you wanted to tell me about the crockpot?

Brenda Reed:

Okay. So I have a hard time with the whole Instapot thing. I get it for convenience. But in my culinary school, we studied some traditional foundational approaches, like macrobiotic and ayurvedic cooking. And those really, really stem from like a long and slow cook with infusion and things. So I have a hard time jumping on the Instapot crowd, even though I know, if it gets people to eat more plants and have flavor I'm all for it.

Rip Esselstyn:

No, I get it. Something about it seems like, doesn't seem quite right. You can cook something in eight minutes, like that typically takes several hours.

Brenda Reed:

I was just thinking about when you said your red curry paste was from 2012. I traveled to Thailand and Laos in 2012 and I took cooking classes there and we were making our own curries from all the spices and the paste. And then the cook hooking in Laos was over a clay pot. Most people say Laos, but they told me it was Laos. So Laos was over a clay pot and a fire. So you had to be patient by a running river, the Mekong. So in 2012, when you bought your curry, I was making curry in Thailand.

Rip Esselstyn:

Wow. Once again, I'm jealous. You're going to Mexico. You're in Thailand making curries.

Brenda Reed:

Living the life.

Rip Esselstyn:

Must be nice to be Brenda Reed.

Brenda Reed:

Hey, it is right at the moment.

Rip Esselstyn:

Wow. So we're winding down here. Any last words that you want to like impart to our guests about soups or broths as we go into the holiday season?

Brenda Reed:

I do. I do. Honestly, it doesn't matter what the recipe calls for or what it has. It's all what you like and your flavor. And you really shouldn't be intimidated by making anything because soup is just liquid. And so it can look like, obviously Rip likes it chunky, I like it a little in the medium area. And so it can look and feel and taste however you want. And I just don't think you should be afraid of it. Go quick or go long. It doesn't matter. And you'll be great. And we're here for you.

Rip Esselstyn:

The thing about soups, again to me, they're so versatile and you can have them for dinner. You can have them for lunch next day, put them on a bed of greens, put them on a ground bed of brown rice, barley, you name it. So get out there and like start making some soups. And the thing is you feel like you've accomplished so much when you've made a good soup on a Saturday or Sunday.

Brenda Reed:

Oh, I agree. I agree. Absolutely.

Rip Esselstyn:

Yeah. Hey, as we're wrapping things up, I want to remind you, go to the episode page @planstrongpodcast.com and there you'll have access to so many recipes. You'll actually be able to get the recipe for banging bok choy that Brenda talked about and also the veggie paella.

Brenda Reed:

You got it.

Rip Esselstyn:

It's super exciting as well. And I can't believe, I almost forgot. The whole month of November, we are doing a line drive sale across all the broths, the chilies and the stews at Whole Food Market stores nationwide, a dollar off. So go in and be sure to check it out. We all also are launching as of, I think today, all of our broths, chilies and stews that you can get now @planstrongfoods.com. So you can sit in the comfort of your home, order them and they're drop shipped right to your doorstep. So that's pretty exciting as well.

Rip Esselstyn:

And then one more thing to share with you and that is this Sunday from 5:00 to 6:30 PM Central Time, we are going to be doing our next Rip's Rescue Free Event. It's all centered around men's health, a change of heart. And I've invited two rockstar physicians to join me, Dr. Aaron Spitz, who all of you know from the Game Changers film, he is spectacular. He's also the author of The Penis Book. And then we also have Dr. Brian Asbill. Brian is a lifestyle cardiologist. He's been on the podcast. He's been on another Rip's Rescue and he is just such a gem of a human being and can't wait for y'all to meet Aaron and Brian. So again, that's this Sunday. If I've talked way too much, again, just go to the episode page @planstrongpodcast.com and we'll have all this information and more for you. All right, Brenda, thank you again for joining me.

Brenda Reed:

You're welcome Rip.

Rip Esselstyn:

Peace, Engine 2.

Brenda Reed:

Peace, Engine 2.

Rip Esselstyn:

Keep it plantstrong and we'll see y'all next time. Thanks.

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