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Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

September 20, 2023

Creamy comfort in a warm bowl of vegetable soup with flavor that the kids will love!

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

Product links in this post are affiliate links. It does not cost you anything, and helps maintain the free information on this site, as well as answer the questions of “what brand do you use?” Please know I never personally recommend any product I wouldn’t use on my own family.

Cooler weather transitions, and warm bowls of soup!

It’s typically a slow go around here to make the move into cooler weather, but it’s most noticeable in the mornings, and the evenings. Sure, we’ll still have a 70 or even 80 degree day here or there, but those morning and evening temps in the 50’s is what cues us to the season change. We needed hoodies for a morning of apple picking last weekend, and it was so nice to come home to warm bowls of comforting soup for an early lunch!

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

“Kid Friendly” and “vegetables” in the same recipe?!

I know veggies aren’t typically kids’ first choice of food to eat, but we all know the importance to get mineral rich, fiber rich vegetables into our kids, and also to broaden their taste palates for all kinds of foods! Fortunately, there are ways to make veggies not only taste great for everyone, but also make those veggie vitamins absorb into our bodies easily, using creamy real fats! It’s that whole “fat soluble vitamin” thing – we need the fat for absorption, so lets make the veggies taste great with yummy, creamy fat. The kids will eat them easier, and the veggies will absorb too…win-win! Soups are a great way to get that creamy fat in with the veggies to make them taste great, and absorb easily.

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

What does Creamy Vegetable Soup taste like?

The key to great soup flavor all lies in the getting those veggies down in some butter to cook for a bit before adding anything else. The sweet flavor that comes from caramelized onions and carrots is pure magic. Every bit of this soup is filled with creamy potato and sweet carrots in a savory, satisfying broth. Those little bits of sweet corn definitely contribute to this soup’s kid friendliness, and while corn is technically a grain, not a vegetable, I’m all about sprinkling a hand full of corn into a soup to get kids excited about eating it.

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

The Method :: Let’s get this creamy vegetable soup started!

As mentioned above, the first part of soup making is what builds the best flavor. Get those staple veggies down in some butter and cook them for a bit. This will impart so much flavor to your broth as you continue to build your soup.

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free
Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

The Method :: Finishing the creamy vegetable soup

Once you get your veggies softened, you’ll add some garlic and flour to coat the veggies. This flour will soak up the fat and make a creamy broth base once the broth is added. You’ll add in your potatoes and broccoli, along with the broth and seasonings and simmer for 10 minutes. If you give that broccoli a small chop, they will disappear into the soup, and also give the soup more of a creamy broccoli soup flavor.

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

Veggie swaps

I always have broccoli on hand, so that is the main “green” veg I use in this creamy vegetable soup most of the time. But this is very flexible. If you have frozen peas or green beans, those are a great choice, and a budget friendly one if you are in the middle of winter without produce at seasonal prices! Another option would be to leave the broccoli out and wilt in chopped baby spinach at the end for your “green.” I have also swapped sweet potatoes or squash for the white potatoes. Use what you have or what you love in your home!

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

Tell me about those cute crackers!

Because I know I’ll get some questions about the itty bitty flower crackers, let me tell you about them! If you have my cookbook, “The Little Lunchbox Cookbook,” these are the simple 5-ingredient crackers recipe in the “Lunchables” section! The were meant to be larger crackers to make a “Cracker Stacker” Lunchable copycat, but the make cutie little mini crackers for soup too! The taste is incredible, and they couldn’t be easier to make. Do I used boxed gluten free crackers sometimes too – absolutely! But sometimes it’s nice to make these if I have an extra 15 minutes – they really are that easy to make! Here’s the mini flower cookie cutter I use for them. It’s super fun to make mini hearts for Valentine’s day or a birthday too!

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

Does this soup freeze?

I’m not a huge fan of the texture of potatoes that have been frozen and then thawed, so I would not recommend freezing this soup. What you could potentially do if you want to freeze it, is make the soup up until the point where you add the broth in, simmer the broth for a minute to combine the soup, and then stop. Don’t add the potatoes or broccoli. Just cool the soup and freeze it from there. Then, when you want to use the soup, you can thaw it, bring it to a simmer, and cook fresh potatoes and broccoli in the soup for 10 minutes. This will still be faster than making it from the start, so if you like to have a quick, frozen option on hand, you could try it that way!

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp butter to cook in olive oil, bacon fat, or avocado oil work too
  • 1 large onion diced
  • 2 large carrots diced
  • 1 stalk of celery diced
  • 4-5 cloves of garlic minced
  • 1/4 tsp oregano
  • 1/4 tsp thyme
  • 1/3 cup Namaste GF Flour blend
  • 1 ½ cups chopped broccoli florets
  • 1 cup of frozen or drained canned corn
  • 3 medium yellow potatoes large dice
  • ½ cup coconut milk or cream if you can have dairy
  • 1 tsp balsamic vinegar optional but so much depth of flavor with it!
  • Sea salt and pepper to taste

Instructions

  • Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium/high heat, and add the onion, carrot, and celery with a big pinch of sea salt. Cook on medium/high for about 7 minutes until the veggies soften and sweeten.
  • Add the garlic, oregano, and thyme, and stir into the veggies for one minute.
  • Add the flour, and stir to coat the veggies.
  • Add the broth, corn, and potatoes, stir to combine, and bring to a simmer. Put the lid on the pot and low simmer for about 10 minutes, until the potatoes are fork tender. You'll want to stir the soup every once and a while to ensure the potatoes don't stick to the bottom of the pot.
  • Once the potatoes are fork tender, turn the heat off, and add in the coconut milk and vinegar. Stir to combine, and taste for sea salt and pepper, adding that to your taste.

Notes

  • If your child prefers smooth soup, or dislikes “chunks” in their food, you can puree the entire soup. Or puree half of the soup to stir back in so there are less chunks. 
  • Any GF flour blend should work as the flour thickener here, or all purpose flour if you can have gluten
  • You can swap the broccoli for green beans, peas, asparagus, zucchini, or even just wilt in some spinach at the end.
  • You could swap the potatoes for squash or sweet potatoes too!
  • I love a little heat added to my bowl – pinch in some red pepper flakes or cayenne if you like that. 
Creamy Vegetable Soup :: Gluten & Dairy Free

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Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

November 15, 2021

Give those sweet bell peppers a roast with creamy kid friendly sweet potatoes and carrots for a super smooth, velvety blended soup that the kids will ask for every time!

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

Product links in this post are affiliate links. It does not cost you anything, and helps maintain the free information on this site, as well as answer the questions of “what brand do you use?” Please know I never personally recommend any product I wouldn’t use on my own family.

First snowfall of the season, and a new kid favorite soup to warm up with!

The first snow of the season is quite possibly my kids’ most favorite day of the year. My little northern crew lives for fresh snow, and this weekend we got our first dusting, despite the fall trees not quite agreeing with the timing! We were visiting our new home, and the girls just had to make a snowman for the construction crew to enjoy this week. And with the plummeting temperatures around here, I hopped in the kitchen to play around with a new soup to the blog for you!

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

Weekly soup routine

During the cooler months of the year, I like to get a vegetable soup of some sort made every Sunday. Easy favorites like creamy broccoli soup (this one is in my cookbook, The Little Lunchbox Cookbook – it’s just like Panera!), this blended winter veggie soup done in the IP, and Copycat Campbell’s Veggie Soup are among some of our staples. Not only does this help me with an easy lunch for Sunday afternoons that I don’t have to think about, it also gives me soup to pull from for the week to fill up lunchbox thermoses…and fill up my soup mug during the week to get more healing bone broth in.

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

The Veggie Line-Up!

Sweet bell peppers may be the “star” of the show in this soup, but the real “secret weapon” lies in the sweet, creamy vegetables saddling up next to those peppers! Sweet potatoes and carrots are on most kids’ favorite veggie lists, and when you roast them, they get even sweeter. This veggie line-up also happens to be loaded with vitamins and minerals that the whole family needs to stay healthy and focused all winter long.

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

The Method :: Roasting the Veggies

To get the most kid friendly soup flavor for this soup, simply toss the veggies on a sheet tray with some olive oil and little bit of smoky paprika, salt, and pepper, and roast away. You’ll have the soup more than halfway done at this point, and completely hands free while it all roasts!

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

The Method :: Blending the Soup

Once the vegetables are done roasting, I dare you to snitch a little bite! You’ll have to hold yourself back from eating the whole sheet tray at this point, but I promise it will be worth the wait to quickly blend the soup up! Scoop the roasted vegetables into your blender, pour in some bone broth, and buzz away. I like to use the soup setting on my high powered blender for optimal smooth texture. Use whatever you have though! I didn’t always have one of these, and have made this soup using a regular blender, and an immersion blender works too.

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!
Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

The Method :: Finishing the Soup

After you blend the soup, pour it into a soup pan and stir in the coconut milk. You’ll want to warm the soup through from here, and season with salt and pepper to your taste once it has simmer a bit. If you like your soup to have a more “brothy” texture, add another cup of bone broth as well. You can ladle your roasted sweet bell pepper soup and finish with a swirl of coconut yogurt or olive oil too!

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

Freezer friendly?

Absolutely! That is the beauty of soups like this. That whole “cook once, eat twice” deal works well for blended soups, and this one is not any differently. Let your soup cool completely, and store in these freezer safe BPA free quart containers, or in these incredible BPA free silicone soup dividers – you can freeze in 1/2 cup portions, 1 cup portions, or 2 cup portions!

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

Ingredients

  • 2 tbsp olive oil
  • 4 large red, orange, or yellow bell peppers quartered and seeds scooped out (you can use a combo of those colors)
  • 1 small/medium sweet potato cut into 1-inch wedges
  • 2 medium carrots peeled, cut into ½ inch strips
  • 2 small onions halved and then sliced into strips
  • 3 cloves of garlic peeled (leave whole)
  • 1 tsp smoked paprika
  • 1 tsp sea salt
  • ½ tsp dried thyme
  • ¼ tsp pepper
  • 2-3 cups bone broth
  • 1 cup coconut milk

Instructions

  • Pre-heat the oven to 425 degrees. You’ll want to use a large, unlined baking sheet for the roasting.
  • On a large sheet pan, toss the bell peppers, sweet potato, carrots, onions, and garlic with the olive oil, smoked paprika, sea salt, thyme, and pepper. Roast at 425 degrees for 20 minutes.
  • Scoop the roasted veggies into a blender (high powdered blender, if possible, for optimal smooth texture), add 2 cups of bone broth, and blend until smooth. I use the “Soup” blending setting on my Blendtec pictured in this post.
  • Pour the blended soup into a soup pot, add the coconut milk, and bring to a simmer for 5 minutes. Taste for salt and pepper to your preference. You can add more bone broth if you want a thinner soup.
  • Garnish with swirls of coconut yogurt and/or olive oil if you wish.
Roasted Sweet Bell Pepper Soup :: Gluten Free & Dairy Free!

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Spinach Lasagna Soup

August 17, 2014

Everything you love about lasagna, loaded with nourishing bone broth, and in a fast prep, packable soup form!

Spinach Lasagna Soup

Product links in this post are affiliate links. It does not cost you anything and helps maintain the free information on this site! Please know I would never personally recommend any product I wouldn’t use on my own family.

10 years into blogging…

This spring will mark 10 years of blogging in this RGN space! As I’ve been preparing new posts for the fall and winter, I decided that some of my older posts were very due for a face lift in the photo department. A lot of my older posts do not have step by step photos – I was lucky to even get that done with 3 kids under the age of 6! I started making a list of staples – recipe posts that we still use all the time, even 10 years later – so that I could photograph a little more detail and updates. This soup is one of those staples – one of the very first posts on my blog, and still a family favorite that is asked for over and over in our house during the colder months of they year.

Spinach Lasagna Soup

Comforting soup, nutrient dense ingredients

One of the reasons I love this spinach lasagna soup so much is that even my husband will eat it. He isn’t much of a soup guy – if it has meat it in he’ll give it a go. But this soup! This soup he actually will make for his work week lunch prep to eat all week long. It was one of the first ways I could actually get a green vegetable into a meal for him that he enjoyed. The flavor is incredible, and each bowl is so comforting. And because it’s packed with bone broth, grassfed beef, and even sometimes a little liver snuck in there, it is really a nutrient dense meal you can feel good about having on the menu all soup season long!

Spinach Lasagna Soup

Fast prep for busy families

While I do love that this spinach lasagna soup is loaded with nutrients my growing kids need, I also love that it is fast to make. It makes it’s way onto my menu at least twice a month in the cold months of the year because of that reason too! Just a handful of ingredients, and simple soup making methods can make the best tasting soup.

Spinach Lasagna Soup

So let’s get started!

To get your soup started, you’ll just need some onion and garlic. Once you get those cooked down in some butter, you can add the beef into the pot to brown. Do you see where this is going? It really is a quick and easy prep!

Spinach Lasagna Soup

How to finish your spinach lasagna soup

Once the beef has browned, you’ll add in the tomatoes and broth. Bring the soup to a simmer, and the pasta gets to cook right there in the pot with everything else! No separate pot for boiling the pasta – this is one of those one pot wonders! Once the pasta has cooked to al dente, you can finish the soup by wilting in the spinach, and then adding salt and pepper to your taste. Parmesan cheese is a lovely add-in if you tolerate dairy, but it tastes great without if you don’t. I’ve added nutritional yeast for a little cheesy flavor without the dairy too.

Spinach Lasagna Soup
Spinach Lasagna Soup

Don’t forget!

Never underestimate doubling up something like this to pack for school thermoses or to take to work with you! The recipe here as written will be gone in one sitting with my family of 5, so I double it if I want to send it along to school with them the next day!

Print Recipe
5 from 3 votes

Spinach Lasagna Soup

Prep Time10 minutes
Cook Time20 minutes
Total Time30 minutes
Course: Soup
Cuisine: American
Keyword: lasagna soup, spinach lasagna soup, spinach lasagna soup recipe
Servings: 16 servings

Ingredients

  • 1 tbsp butter or olive oil to cook in
  • 1 medium onion chopped
  • 4 large cloves garlic minced
  • 1 lb grassfed ground beef
  • 1 TB Italian seasoning
  • 15 oz organic diced tomatoes or tomato sauce
  • 2 quarts beef bone broth or chicken broth
  • 8 oz gluten free pasta
  • 1/2 lb fresh organic spinach
  • ½ cup organic grated parmesan cheese to stir in optional – if you are dairy free it is just as good without this, or try some nutritional yeast for cheesy flavor.
  • Sea salt/pepper to taste

Instructions

  • Melt the butter in a soup pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook 5-7 minutes with a pinch of sea salt to draw out the juices and sweeten the onion.
  • Add the garlic and cook for a minute.
  • Add the ground beef and Italian seasoning and cook until the beef is browned.
  • Add the broth and tomatoes and bring to a boil.
  • Do not reduce to a simmer – add the pasta and boil the pasta in the broth until the pasta is al dente.
  • Once the pasta is cooked, bring the heat down to low and add the spinach and parmesan. The spinach will need just a minute to wilt. Taste the soup for salt and pepper and add to your taste.

Notes

  • If you want to add liver to your soup, you can mix grated liver in with your grassfed beef – it will cook alongside and you really won’t notice it!

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