I have been meaning to post this Keto soup recipe, but it is the kind of recipe I make without measuring, and I knew I’d need to measure things before I could tell anyone else how to make it; and also I’d probably need to take some photos, and I don’t know how to make food look good in photos. So I kept putting it off, and then today Life of a Doctor’s Wife mentioned that she has extreme soup cravings while on keto, and so that was sufficient motivation, and I assume by now you are accustomed to the level of photojournalism you can expect around here.

It doesn’t even manage to look HOT

As I made the soup today, I weighed/measured things. But in almost every case, I first collected what I was going to put into the soup, and then I measured it—so most of these measurements are in no way exact, and will vary each time I make the soup. The measurements are for a single portion, and it’s fast and easy: I forgot to time it, but I started making it at 12:15 or 12:20, and at 12:55 I was done eating the soup and realizing I’d forgotten to time it. First I will write the recipe out in the “walking you through it” way, which I think makes it easier to learn the gist so that you could make your own modifications. And then after that I will write it out the normal way, so that you are not driven up a tree by having to paw through heaps of words to find the few you need.

In a small saucepan (mine is a 1-quart), I put 1.5 cups of water. I add ground pepper and ground crushed red pepper flakes, and I counted how many cranks of each, but that isn’t helpful because different grinders are more or less generous. But I did 15 cranks of the crushed red pepper flakes (ungenerous grinder), and 7 cranks of black pepper (medium-generous grinder). I turn the burner on and get the water/spices heating up while I handle the vegetables.

You can use whatever keto vegetables you like / have on hand. I use either one branch of celery, or else one jalapeno pepper (seeds/ribs fully removed), or sometimes I have half a pepper left over from something else, and then I’ll use that plus half a branch of celery. Today I had celery, so I used that; I diced it up and weighed it, and it weighed 3 ounces. I put that into the water along with the crumbs from the bottom of the bag of frozen broccoli. I go through a lot of frozen broccoli, and the crumbs are hard to eat but it feels wasteful to throw them away; this is the perfect moment for them. I weighed this particular bag of crumbs and it was 1.5 ounces, but it seemed like fewer crumbs than usual; I would think 2-3 ounces would be ideal. I put those into the water too. And maybe you don’t have broccoli crumbs, because you had like four bags of them in the freezer and realized this was ridiculous so you finally threw them out! So then you’d use celery AND a jalapeno, or maybe you’d put in non-crumb broccoli, or maybe you have other keto vegetables on hand so you’d use those instead. Whatever you have, like 5-6 ounces of it.

When the water/vegetables boil, I turn them down to a nice hearty simmer and let them cook for 5 minutes. (I would cook for longer if I were using broccoli florets instead of crumbs.) Meanwhile I have been turning my attention to the chicken. One of my keto staples is Perdue Short Cuts pre-cooked chicken breast strips. They’re perfect for when I just want to add a little chicken to an omelet or something, and they’re perfect for quick soup. I take out several pieces of chicken and dice it up; I weighed it this time and it was 3.5 ounces, but the soup seemed a little heavy on chicken this time, so I would think 3 ounces would be ideal.

When the timer rings, I add the chicken to the pan and turn the heat back up. I also add 1.5 tsp of chicken bouillon; I like the Herb Ox brand. And let’s be honest with ourselves: I kind of heap up the measuring spoon, so it’s probably more like 2 tsp. I also add a few shakes of salt. And I add a dollop of butter. Don’t skip the butter: once, I made some soup and it just did not seem very good, and I wondered if I was Over the soup—and then I realized I’d forgotten the butter. If you use a nice fatty chicken broth instead of water + bouillon, you can probably skip the butter—but otherwise, it’s the butter that stands in for the chicken fat that ought to be in there, and it is quite important—and even more so if you are sick and need Building Up! When I measured it, I used 1 tsp, but that didn’t seem like enough while I was eating the soup and so I added another half-tsp; and then I was remembering that when I first started making this soup, I sautéed the celery/pepper in butter before adding the water, and when I did it that way I was probably using more like a tablespoon of butter, and that was not too much butter. So in short, use butter one way or another, and don’t skimp on it. Butter and salt are two of the good things about keto, and they are what make this soup yummy rather than pitiful.

Keto Chicken Vegetable Soup

1.5 c. water
ground pepper
ground crushed red pepper flakes
5-6 ounces of keto vegetables (e.g. celery, jalapeno peppers, broccoli)
3 oz cooked chicken, diced
1 T. butter
1.5 tsp chicken bouillon
salt

In a one-quart saucepan, combine water, ground pepper, pepper flakes, and vegetables. Heat to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for 5 minutes or so. Add chicken, butter, bouillon, and salt, and return to a boil, then remove from heat and CONSUME.