The recipes below are cozy fall and winter soups that keep the gut healing principles into practice. Bone broth is the base of each of the soups and makes healing your gut part of your everyday life via soup!
LifeWorks Integrative Health:
We are huge fans of bone broth. We’ve posted about it before, and will keep talking about it because it has huge benefits. You can click the image to get our detailed recipes. Once you’ve made or purchased high quality bone broth, you might wonder… what now?
Good broth is delicious to drink, but also makes a powerful base to any soup. In our previous post, we talked about leaky gut, and one of the top foods to heal leaky gut is bone broth. Others are cooked vegetables, coconut products (without additives), and organic meat, and cultured foods. To get you started in putting gut healing principles into your everyday life, we’ve come up with 3 soups packed full of nutrient dense, gut healing foods.
They are gluten free, dairy free, sugar free, and when you choose organic produce, GMO free. Each of these recipes are very flexible, so feel free to mix up the veggies or meats to suit your family’s needs. For example, the butternut squash soup can be 1/2 butternut squash and 1/2 pureed carrots. Celery, carrots and onion add a depth of flavor to any of these soups.
1. Butternut Squash Soup
Ingredients:
- 1 large butternut squash (about 3 pounds), halved vertically and seeded
- 1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for drizzling
- ½ cup chopped shallot (about 1 large shallot bulb)
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 4 garlic cloves, pressed or minced
- 1 teaspoon maple syrup
- ⅛ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
- 1 can full fat coconut milk
- 2-3 cups homemade bone broth (chicken broth)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons butter, to taste (substitute olive oil for dairy free soup)
- Preheat the oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and line a rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper. Place the butternut squash on the pan and drizzle each half with just enough olive oil to lightly coat the squash on the inside (about 1 teaspoon each). Rub the oil over the inside of the squash and sprinkle it with salt and pepper.
- Turn the squash face down and roast until it is tender and completely cooked through, about 45 to 50 minutes. Set the squash aside until it’s cool enough to handle, about 10 minutes. Then use a large spoon to scoop the butternut squash flesh into a bowl and discard the tough skin.
- Meanwhile, in a medium skillet (or large soup pot, if you’ll be serving soup from that pot), warm 1 tablespoon olive oil over medium heat until shimmering. Add the chopped shallot and 1 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring often, until the shallot has softened and is starting to turn golden on the edges, about 3 to 4 minutes. Add the garlic and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds, stirring frequently.
- If you have a high performance blender like a Vitamix (see notes if you’re using an immersion blender instead), transfer the cooked shallot and garlic to your blender. Add the reserved butternut, maple syrup, nutmeg and a few twists of freshly ground black pepper. Pour in coconut milk, being careful not to fill the container past the maximum fill line. Secure the lid and select the soup preset. The blender will stop running once the soup is super creamy and hot. If there is enough room in your blender for the broth feel free to add, but it can be stirred in late. If you are using a standard blender, you will need to blend in batches. An extra bowl or fresh pot is helpful to put each pureed batch into something until all is pureed. If extra liquid is needed for your blender, add the broth as needed to get it going.
- Transfer soup back to soup pot, add additional broth to desired consistency, add 1-2 tbsp butter or olive oil, salt and pepper to taste, stir and let gently simmer for about 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Do not boil or soup will scald on the bottom of pan.
- Serve immediately. You can garnish with fried sage leaves, bacon crumbles and dollop of plain full fat yogurt if well tolerated. Let leftover soup cool completely before transferring it to a proper storage container and refrigerating it for up to 4 days. Or, freeze this soup for up to 3 months.
(Adapted from www.cookieandkate.com)
2. Creamy Chicken* Potato Soup
Ingredients:
- 8 russet potatoes, diced into cubes
- 4 cups chicken stock
- 1 can full fat coconut milk
- 2-3 cloves garlic
- 1/2 onion diced
- salt and pepper, to taste
- 4-8 slices bacon (preferably pastured bacon from quality source)
- 1/2 cup fresh chives or green onion diced (optional)
3. Cauliflower Meatball Soup
Ingredients:
- 4-6 cups bone broth
- 6-8 cups cauliflower florets (leave out the fibrous stalks)
- 2 cloves of minced garlic
- 1 medium onion, diced
- 2 T fresh parsley (optional)
- 1 lb grassfed ground beef
- 1 tsp Real Salt (more to taste)
- 1 tsp Pepper (more to taste)
Instructions:
Add onion, cauliflower, bone broth and 1/2 of garlic amount to large pot. Simmer until cauliflower is tender. While soup is simmering, mix remaining garlic, fresh parsley, salt and pepper into ground beef. Mixing with clean hands is most efficient. Form small quarter sized balls and set aside. When cauliflower is tender, remove from heat and blend soup using high powered blender like a Vitamix, an immersion blender, or a food processor in batches until soup is creamy. Return pureed soup back to soup pot. Carefully drop each meatball into soup and simmer on medium heat until meatballs are cooked through- about 20 minutes or when meat thermometer in center of meatball reaches 165 degrees.
Optional: If chunkier soup is desired, add broccoli florets and/or diced carrots to soup with meatballs and cook until tender.
About the author
Dr. Corey Priest has been practicing functional medicine since 2001. in2GREAT was founded in 2014 by Dr Priest after 13 years of experience with his other practices. Over his career, Dr. Priest has worked with and helped well over 10,000 patients under a functional medicine model.
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