Vegan 'cream' of broccoli soup

While my cheddar broccoli soup is rich, creamy, and quite tasty, it's also pretty far from healthy. Each small 7 ounce serving has 2 oz. of cheese and 1 oz. cream, among other things, like beer, butter, and flour.

Since I still had an abundance of broccoli from CSA Week #8 and CSA Week #9 I decided to try making a healthier vegan broccoli soup, without any cheese or cream.

After searching the net I came across this recipe , which looked so good I didn't really have any major modifications to make to it.

The vegetarian soup stock recipe on the page also looked really good, and I actually had everything for it, but I didn't want to spend 8 hours making it. I used More Than Gourmet Veggie-Stock Gold , which is made from actual vegetables and has no added starches, fats, and is low in sodium. It's much better than veggie bouillon cubes! For the 16 ounces of vegetable stock I added 0.8 oz. of stock base (1:20 ratio).

I used hemp milk instead of rice since my grocery store did not carry all permutations of soy, almond, hemp, and rice in unflavored, vanilla, and chocolate in sweetened and unsweetened. I decided go to with unflavored, unsweetened hemp for this recipe since neither sugar nor vanilla made any sense in this recipe. It's a little labor-intensive but making a vegan roux (olive oil + flour cooked at low for 10 minutes) and adding in the milk substitute makes a nicely textured cream substitute.

I also only made a half recipe, but it's quite good so I might make a whole recipe next time. The half recipe makes about 28 oz., which is 2 or 3 servings. It's very healthy, so a big bowl of it is probably in order. The quantities below are already halved (the original recipe was twice these quantities):

7.5 oz. broccoli (3 cups) 16 oz. vegetable stock 0.5 oz. chopped parsley (1/2 cup) 1/4 tsp. dried rosemary 1/2 tsp. dried thyme freshly ground black pepper 2 tbsp. olive oil 0.2 oz. garlic, minced (1 clove) 1.9 oz. onion, small dice (half a small onion) 0.8 oz. celery (1/2 stalk), small dice 1 1/2 tbsp. all-purpose flour 8 oz. unsweetened, unflavored rice, soy, almond, hemp, or other substitute milk salt

Peel the broccoli stems. Cut the stems and florets into small pieces. Some of the florets will be reserved and be in the soup directly, though most of the broccoli will be puréed.

Bring the stock to a boil. Add the broccoli. Bring back to a boil, reduce the heat to medium, and cook the broccoli until tender.

Remove about 1/2 cup of broccoli florets from the pan, reserve to add back into the soup at the end.

In a separate sauté pan, add a little olive oil and cook the onions, garlic, and celery over medium low heat until soft, being careful to not burn them.

Add the parsley, thyme, rosemary, and black pepper to the pot of broccoli and stock. I used whole dried thyme and rosemary, so I quickly ground them with a half dozen black peppercorns in a spice grinder before adding to the stock.

Purée the broccoli, stock, and spices. Set aside.

In a clean soup pan, add olive oil. Add the flour and cook over low heat for 10 minutes to make a vegan roux. Increase the heat to high. Stir in the milk substitute a little at a time, constantly whisking. Bring to a boil, whisking, until thick and free of lumps.

Add the broccoli purée and broccoli florets. Reduce the heat to medium and heat through but do not boil. Add salt if necessary. Serve.

The soup is a good broccoli soup that many people would like even if you didn't tell them that it didn't have any cream in it. It's an excellent vegan broccoli soup.

The soup is vegetarian and vegan. It's dairy free and lactose free. It's not gluten free, but it could be if you substituted for the flour in the roux. Veggie stock gold is gluten free and lactose free. Assuming you didn't use soy milk, it's also soy free which is somewhat uncommon for vegan 'cream' soup.