Colorful Vegetable Soup with Celery Root

Celery Root or Celeriac is what we use back home as winter vegetable for soups, salads, stews, you name it. It’s cheap, readily available and has a great flavor both raw and cooked. You could most definitely use regular green celery, which has a bit more of a pungent flavor, compared to the almost a bit nutty or earthy flavor of the root crop.

Cerliac

Making vegetable soup from scratch could not be easier, and I am giving you a basic recipe that can be made in as many variations as there are cooks.

For this particular soup I chose colorful veggies, and I am foregoing the usual potato for the sake of the ‘getting lean in the new year’ and all the paleo eaters out there and I am using, as I just said, celery root instead, which has a much lower Glycemic Index (GI) than a potato. choosing vegetables (and foods in general that are low on the glycemic scale keeps you full longer, therefore helping to control your appetite. In very simple words (yes there is more to it, but I’ll spare you) the idea behind the glycemic index is to measure how quickly a particular food affects your blood sugar/insulin response, meaning how quickly the sugars in it get digested and find their way into your blood stream.

Alright, now that we fed the brain, let’s look at our tummy 🙂

Ingredients

1/2 medium onion, peeled and chopped
1/2 celery root, peeled and cut into chunks
3-4 large tomatoes, diced * see note
2 carrots, diced
1/4 to 1/2 a head of cauliflower, separated into florets (depending ont he size of the cauliflower you get)
1/4 of a head of a medium savoy cabbage, cut into chunks (or use some leaves off a large one)
4-5 stalks Swiss Chard, chopped(any color you like, rainbow colors look pretty)
1 tsp salt

* I used frozen ones from my Garden in the summer: when they are at the peak of ripeness, just chop and put in zip top bags for soup in the winter. Alternately you could use a can of no salt added diced tomatoes)

Makes one 3 1/2 qt pot full

Directions

In a stock pot (mine is 3 1/2 qts, or so it says on the bottom) heat one tablespoon on olive or coconut oil over medium, then add the onions,a dn cook until translucent but not brown
Add the celery and carrots, stir and cook until the onions are beginning to brown
Add the tomatoes, with any juice that collected on the cutting board (if using frozen, partially thaw in the fridge overnight) stir and allow to cook 5 minutes to allow some of the juices to come out
Add water to cover the vegetables and bring to a boil, cook 5 minutes, then add the cauliflower and chopped Swiss Chard, bring to a boil again,then reduce the heat, add the salt and simmer until celery, carrot and cauliflower are tender when pierced with a fork.
Serve hot with some crackers or a slice of rustic bread, or enjoy as a first course.

To make this your own:

Instead of celeriac, use 2-3 stalks of celery and a medium potato
Use kale instead of Swiss Chard (but remove the tough stems)
Use spinach, but add right before serving into individual bowls, ladle hot soup over
Don’t like cabbage? Leave it out
Instead of cabbage and kale, use thin cut or quartered Brussel sprouts
Add green beans or snow peas towards the end of cooking time
Leave out the tomatoes
Go through your fridge, anything vegetable can most likely be used up in your yummy soup, the potions are endless 🙂