So what’s the secret? PEELED ZUCCHINI. Neutral flavour that’s easily disguise-able with seasonings. Purees smooth – and white. This is life changing – imagine the possibilities! {Gluten free, low carb, nutrition dense}
45 calorie Creamy Healthy Soup broth
This recipe isn’t one of those healthy food hacks that calls for an enormous amount of effort, or weird ingredients, or where you sacrifice flavour for the sake of less calories. It is, quite simply, my Creamy Zucchini Soup made using PEELED zucchini to make it white rather than keeping the skin on which makes the soup green. So it’s not a desperate recipe creation designed to drastically strip calories from my life. That’s the side benefit. It is genuinely a creamy, silky white soup broth that’s extremely tasty that happens to be unbelievably low calorie, gluten free, low carb and packed with hidden nutrition! Like a savoury, creamy soup broth like Cream of Chicken Soup. It doesn’t taste like zucchinis. They’re pretty neutral in flavour anyway, easily overpowered by flavour additions! It doesn’t have that mouthfeel of richness that cream and butter provides in typical creamy soups. But it’s tasty in its own right!
Healthy Cream of Chicken Soup
For the sake of putting the broth into practice, I’m sharing the creamy white soup broth in the form of a healthy Cream of Chicken Soup today. So I’ve added little bits of chicken, carrot, celery, capsicum/bell peppers and peas. Not an enormous amount because it’s not supposed to be a chunky, fully loaded soup – though you absolutely could if you wanted to. I’m making it just like Heinz canned soup – except with a fraction of the calories, preservative free, made from all natural ingredients! 🙌 The neutral flavour of zucchinis makes it ideal to use as a base for a super low cal savoury white soup broth!
Creamy healthy soup broth ingredients
Here’s what you need for this magical low cal creamy broth. See? No weird health food ingredients. That’s just not how I cook!
How to make the creamy healthy soup broth
I find that many “healthified” recipes tend to require an enormous amount of effort. Soaking, salting, squeezing out excess liquids, lots of pureeing. Not this one. The broth part is just a peel-chop-15 minute simmer-blitz job. The soup part involves sautéing the veggies slowly to bring out the flavour, then adding our magic low cal creamy soup broth. Isn’t it so nice to come across a healthy soup recipe that’s so incredibly simple??
Healthy Soup Add Ins – Cream of Chicken Soup
And here’s what you need to make the healthy version of Cream of Chicken Soup.
Yes, there’s a smidge of butter there. We need a bit – or oil – to sauté all those veggies slowly to bring out the sweetness and intensify the flavour. Little trick for getting the most flavour out of veggies, especially essential when you want to make healthy food using less oil and more vegetables!
Thick and creamy!
I really wanted to show you how thick and creamy the soup really is but found it hard to capture in photos. You will see it in the recipe video below – but as for photos, I found the best way was to use bread!! Which I realise contradicts the whole point of sharing a healthy recipe though I would totally understand / applaud if you chose to use your calorie credits on warm crusty bread slathered in butter to dunk into that creamy soup…..😂
The possibilities! Soups / stews / pasta bakes / casseroles
The neutral, savoury flavour of this creamy low calorie soup broth makes it ideal to use as a healthier, more nutrition dense option in place of richer creamy white soup broths that are typically made with butter and flour. Some examples include:
Corn Chowder Fish Chowder Creamy Broccoli Potato Soup Creamy Vegetable Noodle Soup Ham, Corn, Potato Chowder White Chicken Enchilada Soup
But why stop there? Use it to make rice casseroles. Make pasta bakes. Make white stews. Broccoli au gratin. Oh the possibilities!! Tell me what you’re thinking! – Nagi x
Watch how to make it
More soups to soothe the soul
Life of Dozer
Just a little peek into Dozer’s rough life…