My Favorite Soups for the Postpartum Days

While these soups initially aren't the quickest and easiest to prepare, you will thank yourself for the hard work you put in when baby has arrived and you are looking for a warming, comforting, and healing meal. I personally like to begin my postpartum meal prep at about 30 weeks of pregnancy. Every week I try to make two or three large meals and freeze portions big enough for two in each bag. I try to save 3-4 bags of food each time I make a large meal. Times that by 8 or 10 and you get about 24-40 meals saved up for postpartum. I aim to have a months worth, or a little more of meals saved in my freezer.

Storage

My favorite way to store these, and all frozen postpartum meals, is in plastic freezer ziplock bags, laid flat when first freezing, so you get a nice flat easy to store "brick" of soup or casserole. Yes, for you crunchy moms, like me, you cringe at the idea of storing your food in plastic. But in this case I have taken the risk of micro-plastics in my food for a short period of time. That way I can have convenient, homemade, nutritious meals that even my husband can prepare. We like to say an extra prayer when making known risky moves when it comes to food, we always ask for the lord to help our bodies block out all the bad stuff and absorb all the good. After all he can move mountains, why couldn't he stop micro-plastics from entering out bodies? By storing the soup in gallon ziplock bags laid flat you can then cut open the bag, lay it flat in a glass casserole dish in your oven on warm or 250 degrees F. I have found this to be the most effective way at reheating, as you can set it and forget it for about 20-30 minutes while you are nursing baby and comeback to a nice warm soup ready to eat. Don't over fill the bags! I try to fill them a little less than halfway.

Bone Stock

Now on to the good part, how I prepare each soup! I like to start off with a great nutrient dense soup base, so I home make my own bone stock. I made one beef bone stock batch and one chicken bone stock batch one day a few months back. Then I stored what I made that day in my freezer inside mason jars. You could do it the same way I have done it, or you can make your bone stock all night long in a slow cooker and start your soups the following day. I chose to make it and freeze it because I have a toddler and I don't like to work my tail off in the kitchen for two days in a row, I like to conserve my energy and allow myself to recuperate for a few weeks. I also have to prepare three meals a day in the same kitchen, so dishes on dishes, on dishes.... I have to give myself time to get the kitchen back together before I start another big project.

To prepare my beef bone stock, I use whatever organic beef bones I have handy, we butcher our own cow so I usually go for the beef shanks, short ribs, neck bones, and/ or oxtail bones. I throw those into a big pot, and add water to it so the water level is about double the amount of meat in the pot. I then prepare onions, carrots, celery, and garlic. I like to cut 2 onions into 1/4', a whole bag of carrots and celery cut into 3 inch sections, and I smash my garlic cloves with the side of a knife and toss it in, I use about a whole head of garlic. You could use less garlic for sure, I just love garlic and it has a lot of healing and antibiotic properties so I tend to go overboard on it in my bone stocks. You could peel the garlic, but I strain everything through a fine mesh strainer at the end before putting it into jars, so it doesn't really matter. For the chicken stock, I do the same exact process for the water and veggies. I like to use about 12 organic chicken feet, and 2-3 chicken backs, I buy my chicken backs and feet from azure standard in bulk. You could definitely get away with using two whole organic chickens in place of what I use. I prefer this way because you get more bones and cartilage to make good gelatinous bone stock, instead of more meat. You will still get a good stock out of whole chickens, but the meat sorta becomes a mushy mess and is hard to salvage and save for soup afterwards. I don't like to waste good meat personally. Now to cook them you will let them simmer on low- low/medium heat for 6-12 hours, I usually do about 6-8 hours because I start in the morning and finish in the evening. Let It cool just a little so you don't burn yourself, its never fun messing with piping hot liquids when trying to strain it and get it put into jars. Get a fine mesh strainer and strain into a large container first, I like to use a big gallon glass jar, I have also used big bowls for this. Make sure you get out all the juice from the veggies and meat, I use a spoon to push down on the contents in the strainer to get it all out and have the trash can beside me to get rid of whats in the strainer and just keep going in little batches until Im finished. I then transfer it into smaller mason jars. I let the jars cool completely before putting them in the freezer.

Beef Stew

For the Beef Stew, I use 3lbs of cubed chuck roast and about 2lbs of spare ribs. I add that with about 7-8 medium sized potatoes to a pot then add the home made beef bone broth over the top to double the amount of meat and potatoes, you will need a big huge pot! I let this cook for 3 hours, I then added chopped celery, carrots, chopped green beans, peas and corn, I used frozen organic for the convenience. I had some salad green mix I needed to use up so I added that in too, you could use kale or spinach in place of this. I then turned off the heat and let it all cool down in the pot. Once it was good and cool, I put it in the ziplock freezer bags, as I was putting it in bags, I pulled out the bones. Then put the bags in the freezer. My favorite thing to eat with this soup, is a good sweet cornbread with butter on top!

Duck Noodle Soup

For the Duck Noodle Soup, I added a whole duck to the pot and covered with chicken stock and cooked it for 3 hours, I then pulled out the duck and placed it in baking dish to allow to cool, once it cooled off a little bit I took off all the meat and skin and placed it back in the pot with chopped broccoli, celery, carrots and spring salad mix. Turn off the heat and allow to cool and put in ziplock bags. I do not add noodles to the soup yet, they will get soggy and gross if allowed to cook at all before freezing, especially since I make fresh home made noodles. I personally make noodles and freeze them separately. You could add them to the cooled soup right before packaging and they may turn out good. I personally lay my noodles in the bottom of the baking dish with the flat brick of soup on top so they get good and covered with liquid while heating up in the oven. I used duck in this recipe mostly because I prefer duck over chicken, but duck also has more nutrients than chicken, the fat in duck has amazing healing qualities, not to mention it helps nursing moms provide adequate saturated fat in their breast milk to help baby grow. Half the fatty acids found in breast milk are saturated fats such as animal fats, they make up about half of our cell membranes, and they aid in the transport of all fat soluble vitamins. Some people don’t like duck and that’s okay, but I would give it one good try in this soup, you may actually decide it’s pretty good when prepared in a soup. Not to mention, you will be providing amazing nutrients to yourself and your baby!

If you haven't read the book The Nourishing Traditions Book of Baby & Child Care written by Sally Fallon Morell I highly recommend it! It has great information on all things nutrition and I will refer to it a lot in future blog posts when I do a deep dive into postpartum nutrition and provide lots of good info on how to best support your body in the postpartum journey!

Thank you for following along with me, as I am also going through the end of my second pregnancy and preparing myself for the postpartum period! Feel free to reach out to me with any questions or comments @gbfbirthservices@yahoo.com.