Eat Me Skinny Kohlrabi Soup
This is diet-changing stuff. I’ve asked myself how something so creamy and yummy can also be so healthy and light. Oh, but it can. It’s called Kohlrabi.
Like most vegetables, kohlrabi is healthy and nutritious. This one is particularly rich in Vitamin C, though. Just a hundred-gram serving gives you all your daily Vitamin C requirement. And, my goodness, it is so low in calories it is almost criminal. It has the creaminess of potatoes but it has just one third of the calories.
One kilogram of raw kohlrabi has only 270 calories. To put this into perspective, that’s less than a calorie count of 100 grams of bread. Amazing, isn’t it?
Geeky science fact: Kohlrabi is actually man-made. Along with cabbage, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, collard greens, and Brussels sprouts, it was created by artificial selection from the wild mustard plant (brassica oleracea). Artificial selection of a plant means the intentional selection of certain traits you like from the plant, so for example:
- Brocolli resulted from the suppression of flower development.
- Kale was the outcome from the enlargement of leaves
- Cauliflower came from sterile flowers
- Cabbage arose from suppression of the internode’s length (the bit of the plant stem between the nodes); and
- Kohlrabi was the result of enhancement of the lateral meristem (part of the plant cells involved in lateral/sideways growth)
Thankfully, contrary to artificial selection and cultivation, cooking Kohlrabi is not a complicated undertaking. Here’s as perfectly basic, easy-to-make soup with a great clean flavour which you can tweak to your heart’s content – wants spice, add cayenne; dreaming of Italy, add bay leaves and rosemary; or like it exotic, add cumin powder, you get the gist.
- 1 tablespoons coconut oil
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 2 kohlrabi bulbs, peeled and chopped
- 2 1/2 cups vegetable stock
- 2 1/2 cups almond milk
- Salt and black pepper
- Vegan parmesan (I use
- Heat coconut oil in a large pan. Add onions and cook gently until soft, about 10 minutes. Add kohlrabi and cook for 3 minutes.
- Add vegetable stock, and almond milk to pan, and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce heat to low and simmer 25 minutes or until kohlrabi is tender. Let cool for a few minutes.
- Using an immersion blender, bench top blender or food processor, puree soup until smooth.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper. Serve in heated bowls with freshly cracked pepper and a generous sprinkle of vegan parmesan.