This Low Carb Creamy Vegetable Soup is a creamy, deliciously flavorful soup to start out your meal or be a meal all by itself!
My husband and I have been eating low carb for a couple of months now and collectively we’ve lost right at 70 pounds (40 for me, 30 for him). You can read more about how we eat by visiting this post – be sure you scroll through to the bottom for lots of info.
I’ve found some clever work arounds to make traditional recipes more carb friendly and in this post I’m going to show you a great little secret for thick and creamy soups by using a non-traditional thickener.
This is a soup I’ve made for years, ever since I tasted the delicious creamy vegetable soup at the Dixie Stampede Dinner Show. Normally, I add milk and flour to it, both of which are off limits on a low carb diet. In their place in this recipe, I use heavy cream and a non traditional thickener that out performs flour and even corn starch.
If you want to skip ahead to the recipe, scroll down to the ingredient picture. If you’d like to visit a while, grab a glass of tea and keep reading.
Ricky and I just got back from a weekend trip together. This was a business trip of sorts but it was significant because it was the second time we’ve gone away without kids since, well, kids. About eighteen years, give or take. We’ve never been big on babysitters and we’ve always felt we needed more time with our family rather than less so this has worked out great for all of us. We have more of an old fashioned family life – rather than leaving the kids with others while we go galavant, we take them with us and do our catching up one on one over early morning coffee – or evening coffee – or midday coffee. Okay, so coffee is a big part of our relationship. But now that the kids are both older and don’t “need” us as they used to, we are beginning to explore the world without them a bit in preparation for the next chapter of our lives.
Anyway, we had this fun weekend away, three days to be exact. Two of them were spent driving but the company couldn’t be beat so we enjoyed those, too. The kids would text from time to time asking how we were and if we were having fun so we started texting them pictures we had staged. Here is a small sampling:
I spared a few that didn’t need to be on the internet for all of eternity but if you’re in my Front Porch Fellowship group on facebook you can see those there. 🙂
As I type this, I am at Chick Fil A with “my girls” having what we affectionately refer to as “Chicken School”. Every now and then we come to Chick Fil A with all of our books, have breakfast, do school work, have lunch, and head home. It’s great to have a change of scenery and the crazy thing is how much more focused and efficiently they work when we are here – we get twice as much done in half the time. They work so well here that if I could afford it, we’d come every day!
Here is a photo of their current work station right now:
I guess at some point I really should get into the recipe….
You’ll need: Salt*, Pepper, Chicken Broth, Parsley (fresh or dried), Frozen Mixed Veggies, Butter, Heavy Cream, and Frozen Seasoning Blend (or chopped onion).
Little Tip about Potassium – *I am using NoSalt because now that I am eating low carb, bananas are out of my life and I have some serious potassium needs. No Salt is basically granulated potassium. Just 1/4 of a teaspoon of NoSalt has more potassium than a medium sized banana and over six times the amount of potassium that the FDA allows in a potassium supplement – so I’m sticking with NoSalt. 🙂 As long as I have this in one of my meals once a day or so, I don’t have those dreaded charley horses in the middle of the night. When I forget and start having issues, I just mix up a glass of some type of no calorie/no carb drink and add in 1/4 teaspoon of NoSalt for a little homemade gatorade type drink and I’m good to go again.
It’s not a bad idea to take a good multi vitamin as well.
Carby veggie alert: Yup, some of these veggies you see are higher carb than others. Corn, peas, carrots, etc. Use your own judgement based on how low you are trying to keep your carbs when choosing veggies for this soup. Lower carb option are broccoli, cauliflower, green beans, etc.
Oh hey y’all, nothing in this post is medical advice. I’m just talking about what works for me. That applies to this entire post and everything else on the website 🙂
To begin with, melt your butter in a pot or dutch oven and place your onion-ish veggies in it. Saute these over medium heat until kindly* tender and onions are translucent.
*Kindly is a word my grandmother used in place of “kind of”. I love that word :).
Now add in the frozen veggies and broth and cook this on medium high or medium until the veggies are tender.
Once this comes to a bit of a simmer that should take about ten minutes or so.
Add in heavy cream and season with salt and pepper to taste. Note: a little extra salt goes a long way when it comes to flavor so don’t skimp, but do taste as you go so as to not overdo it.
Now comes the thickener.
At this point there are several things you can do.
Option 1: Stir in a handful of instant potato flakes. This is one of my favorite soup and stew thickeners but definitely not low-carb friendly.
Option 2: Quickly stir a tablespoon or two of flour up into about 1/2 cup of water to make a slurry and stir that in. However, this is not on the low carb “great idea” lists, either.
Option 3 (Carb friendly!): Today I am using this amazing thickener called Glucomannan. I buy this from Amazon and it is about $12 for a bottle that will pretty much last you a generation or two (I’m exaggerating but you get my point – click here to see this on Amazon and learn more). Glucomannan is the powdered form of a root that acts as an amazing thickening agent. It also makes you feel pretty full for a good length of time so whenever I use it in a recipe I find that I get that full feeling much faster and generally can’t eat nearly as much as I normally would. There is a lot of research out there that shows this fiber is very diabetic friendly when it comes to lowering glucose levels and such but that just needs to be something you research on your own – I’m here to show you how it works.
To use Glucomannan as a soup thickener: Add 1 teaspoon to one cup of cold water. Stir well and then stir into pot of soup.
Here is a demonstration of how Glucomannan works just to give you a good idea of what this stuff can do and why you really only need to use a small amount:
In this demo, we are adding 2 teaspoons to 1/2 cup of cold water just to show you what happens. You have to put this into COLD water because it seizes up and forms lumps in hot water.
Stir that in, let it sit a minute, and BAM! Gel.
So what we need to do to use this as a soup thickener is not let it get that thick. Make sure you follow the instructions and amounts in the recipe below.
I also use this when I make smoothies for a thicker, more ice cream like consistency. It is a non-traditional ingredient but after using it a few times it has become a favorite in my little bag of cooking tricks. ALWAYS start with way less than you think you will need. Example: for a smoothie, I’d use no more than 1/4 of a teaspoon, maybe even an 1/8.
Either way, stir that into your soup, let it simmer about ten more minutes, and dig in!
Enjoy your low carb soup. If you use Glucomannan in it, get ready for a very filling meal!
Ingredients
- 40 ounces chicken broth
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 10 ounces frozen onion seasoning blend or one large onion, chopped
- 1/4 cup butter
- 26 ounces frozen mixed vegetables of your choice
- 1 tablespoon fresh or dried parsley
- Salt and Pepper to taste
- To thicken: Glucomannan or flour and water
Instructions
- Melt butter in dutch oven or soup pot over medium high heat. Add onion blend (or just onion) and sauté until onion is tender, about 5 minutes.
- Pour in chicken broth and frozen veggies. Bring this just to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer until veggies are tender, about ten minutes. Add in heavy cream, parsley, salt, and pepper. Stir well and continue to simmer.
To thicken with Glucomannan: In a measuring cup, stir 1 teaspoon of Glucomannan into a cup of cold water until dissolved. Stir this into the soup and continue to simmer for about ten minutes more, stirring from time to time.
To thicken with flour: Stir one tablespoon of flour into one cup of water and then stir into soup. Continue to simmer for about ten minutes, stirring from time to time.
This recipe is featured in Meal Plan Monday and Weekend Potluck!
Failure will never overtake me if my determination to succeed is strong enough.
~Og Mandino
Yum
