Tag: vegan soup recipes

Creamy Rosemary Sweet Potato Soup {Dairy-Free, Paleo, Vegan}

On March 7, 2015

In Anti-Inflammatory, Clean Eating, Dairy-Free, GBOMBS, Gluten-Free, How To, My Story, Paleo, Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

Creamy foods are comforting and satisfying.

Since removing dairy products from my diet, I’ve had to get more creative about ways to recreate the silky texture that dairy provides.

One of the best ways to do that is using cauliflower, one of the GBOMBS vegetables (AKA some of the best foods we can eat!).

These roasted garlic cauliflower mashed “potatoes” and this creamy caulifredo sauce are some of my favorite ways to use cauliflower to create creaminess!

Because winter feels like it is never going to end here on the East Coast, I’ve been in hibernation mode and have been really into soups lately. I thought I would try blending cauliflower in with a soup to make it creamy and delicious without the downsides of dairy, so that’s what brings us to this recipe!

This soup is simple to make and uses basic ingredients that are easy to find at any grocery store or farmer’s market.

We used Japanese sweet potatoes, which is why the soup is white instead of orange, but any sweet potato will work.

Give it a try, and let me know what you think! 🙂

Ingredients

1 tablespoon coconut oil or ghee
1 medium onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 teaspoon coarse sea salt, divided
1 tablespoon fresh rosemary leaves
2 sweet potatoes, peeled & chopped
6 cups vegetable stock (here’s how to easily make your own vegetable stock from scraps)
1 head cauliflower, chopped (here’s how to break apart cauliflower in 10 seconds)
1/8 teaspoon black pepper
1 tablespoon 100% pure maple syrup
Sea salt and black pepper, to taste

Directions

In an 8-quart stockpot, melt the coconut oil over medium-high heat.
Saute onion, garlic and a 1/2 teaspoon sea salt and cook until soft, about 4 to 5 minutes.
Add the sweet potatoes, rosemary, and vegetable stock and bring to a boil.
Once boiling, add the cauliflower and cover the pot with a lid. Reduce the heat to a simmer until the vegetables are very tender, about 20 to 25 minutes.
Turn off the heat and stir in the remaining 1/2 teaspoon sea salt and black pepper. Using an immersion blender or regular blender*, blend until very smooth.
Return soup to pot and whisk in the maple syrup. Add more sea salt and pepper, to taste.
Keep the soup warm over low heat until ready to serve. Top with fresh cracked black pepper and a few lightly toasted pumpkin seeds, if you’d like!

*Note: If using a blender, vent it either by removing the lid’s pop-out center or by lifting one edge of the lid as you blend. Drape the blender jar with a kitchen towel. Blend the soup in batches, filling the jar about 1/3-1/2 for each batch.

Hearty Black Bean & Rice Stew {Gluten-Free, Vegan}

By Rachel Druckenmiller

On February 15, 2015

In Clean Eating, Dairy-Free, GBOMBS, Gluten-Free, Vegan, Vegetarian

We’ve been using our vegetable scraps to make homemade vegetable broth and at one point had nearly a dozen mason jars full of broth, sooo we had to find a way to use it!

That’s why we’ve been making LOTS of soups and stews.

This one-pot recipe makes a lot of food and doesn’t require much effort. Once you saute the base vegetables, you just toss in the rest of the ingredients and less than an hour later, you have a big pot of warm, cozy, and hearty stew.

You could really use whatever vegetables you have on hand for this – sub out spinach or Swiss chard for kale or use different herbs, if you prefer.

We had mushrooms to use up, so we chopped them up and put them in to add a bit of a “meaty” texture but without the meat. Plus, mushrooms are one of Dr. Joel Fuhrman’s GBOMBS foods – some of the healthiest foods on the planet!

Yield: ~10 cups

Ingredients

1 tablespoon coconut oil
2 medium onions, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
2 medium carrots, chopped
1/2 pound cremini (AKA baby Portobello) mushrooms, diced
1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 1/2 teaspoons dried oregano
1/2 teaspoon sea salt
2 cans diced tomatoes, no salt added (don’t drain off the juices)
1 15-ounce BPA-free can black beans (we like Eden brand)
2 bay leaves
1 cup long grain brown rice (Trader Joe’s sells 15-minute brown rice!)
6 cups vegetable broth (Click here to see how cheap and EASY it is to make your own)
4 cups dark greens, chopped (we used red curly kale)
black pepper to taste

Directions

In a colander/fine mesh strainer, rinse rice under cold water. Set aside.
In a large stock/soup pot over medium-high heat, heat oil. Add chopped onions, garlic, carrots and mushrooms to pot. Mix well. Cook until veggies are soft, about 5-7 minutes.
Add cayenne pepper, oregano and sea salt to vegetables and saute 1-2 minutes more.
Add tomatoes and their juices, beans, bay leaves, brown rice, and broth. Stir to combine. Bring to a simmer.
Once simmering, cover and reduce heat. Cook at a low simmer for 40-50 minutes or until rice is fully cooked. We used 15-minute quick cooking brown rice from Trader Joe’s, so we had a much shorter cooking time.
Once rice is cooked, add dark greens and stir to combine. Add water if needed (we added about 1 cup of water). Cover and let cook about 5 minutes or until greens are wilted.
Remove bay leaves and serve.

Since this made such a large batch, we froze some of the soup in mason jars, so we will have it in the future when we don’t feel like cooking but want a home cooked meal 🙂 If you freeze it, make sure to leave 2 inches of room between the top of the stew and the lid, so it has room to expand!

Creamy Broccoli Cheeze Soup {Vegan, Gluten-free, Paleo}

By Rachel Druckenmiller

On October 9, 2014

In Clean Eating, Dairy-Free, My Story, Paleo, Products I Use, Recipes, Vegan, Vegetarian

I know it’s a lot of people’s “favorite things” at Panera (especially this time of year as the weather cools)…

But I’ve never been a fan of broccoli cheddar soup.

I’m not sure if it’s the concept or the texture or the fact that I’ve always thought broccoli should stay whole and recognizable and not pulverized in a soup with cheese and cream.

Since I cut out milk and cheese over two years ago, I’ve been on the hunt for recipes that deliver on the rich and creamy factor we think can only come from dairy products, and I wanted to challenge myself to try something new.

(I’ll be writing a whole post about why I cut out dairy products, but the short version is they were triggering a lifetime of congestion, ear/sinus/respiratory infections, postnasal drip, allergies, adult acne, and indigestion. If you have any of those symptoms regularly, try cutting out dairy products for 2-3 weeks and notice how much better you feel! I never would’ve believed it if I hadn’t experienced it myself. It’s amazing how our bodies can heal when we remove foods that harm us and upgrade to foods that heal us. More on that later!)

Back to the broccoli soup.

Because I’m always encouraging people to “try new foods” and give foods they’ve previously sworn off a second chance, I thought I should practice what I preach.

So, I tried a recipe for a “healthified” broccoli cheeze soup.

The skeptic in Bill (and me) was not too confident about how this soup would turn out, so I totally get any reservations you might have about making this recipe…but that’s why we tried it!

And we’re glad we did.

Bill and were BOTH thrilled with how it turned out – rich, creamy and flavorful.

I had to stop myself from drinking it straight out of the mason jars, and we enjoyed it as part of our lunch for several days.

Here are the UPGRADES in this recipe compared to standard broccoli cheddar soup:

Unsweetened almond milk (homemade, too!) instead of half and half (dairy-free)
Nooch instead of cheddar cheese
No flour (gluten-free!)
Way less salt

Not only that, but any excuse to eat more broccoli is a good one – broccoli is known as the DNA whisperer!

Ingredients

2 tablespoons coconut oil, melted* (I used coconut oil, which is a better oil to use for high heat. If you’re paleo but not vegan, you could use grass-fed butter or ghee instead.)
1 medium red onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
1 teaspoon dijon mustard
2½ cups unsweetened almond milk (If store bought, avoid the ingredient “carrageenan”)
2½ cups vegetable broth
5 cups broccoli florets
1 cup nutritional yeast (Wegmans, Whole Foods, MOMs, Amazon, and any natural food stores sell it!)
1 tablespoon lemon juice
1 teaspoon sea salt
1 teaspoon black pepper

Don’t be deterred by the ingredient list or let that be an excuse to not try recipes. I used to do that all the time but found that having key pantry staples on hand made it SUPER easy to make recipes like this.

Most of the time half of the ingredients are things you have in your pantry anyway (i.e., herbs, spices, lemons, onions, and garlic).

Click here for the full recipe details from Running On Real Food!