Recipe for cabbage soup

Prepare this fast and easy recipe for cabbage soup so you will enjoy a delicious and healthy vegetable soup and loose some weight when you keep on eating it.

When you don’t have a blender, then you need to cut all vegetables like mentioned in the recipe. When you do have a normal blender or immersion blender, you will work much faster during ctuuing and cooking: cut the vegetables in bigger chunks and purée your soup to a smooth consistency.

Does the cabbage soup diet work?

This recipe can also be used during the cabbage diet: this is a one week effort to change your eating habits without having to starve yourself. The cabbage diet plan looks like this from day 1 till day 7:

1. Eat all the fruit and cabbage soup you want. For now all fruits, except bananas (see day 4)
2. Eat all the vegetables and cabbage soup you want. Try not to eat beans nor peas but stick to green leaf vegetables. Cooked or raw doesn’t matter and you can add a big baked potato to your meal!
3. Combine day 1 and 2 but without the baked potato treat.
4. Go bananas! Eat at least 8 bananas and drink as much skimmed milk or cabbage soup as you feel like.
5. 10 to 20 ounces (300 to 600grams) of beef or skinless chicken, at least 6 fresh tomatoes, 2 liters of water (4 pints) and all the cabbage soup you want (that is if you still feel like eating anything after 4 normal servings of meat…)
6. Eat as much beef, green leaf vegetables and cabbage soup as you want.
7. Try brown rice, vegetables and fresh fruit juices. Of course keep on drinking your cabbage soup.

Most people will loose a few pounds, but it is still debated whether it’s water or fat you are loosing. The good thing about this diet whenever you opt for only organic produce:

• you will be eating healthy food: no (hidden) sugar, no transfat, no additives, no pesticides and lots of fibers.
• you will hopefully discover some delicious fruits and vegetables that you will continue using in your diet after you finished your cabbage week.
• you will eat at most 1 potato and 1 bowl of rice in the entire week

The main reason why you will loose weight, is that you won’t be eating hidden sugars. Other than that for most of the days, you will have substituted bread, potato, pasta, rice and cereals with vegetable soup: meaning much less carbs. As we notice with people following the paleo diet: a lot of them follow a low carb diet and do loose weight.

Personally, I prefer the paleo diet – which lasts a lifetime-, with from time to time a delicious cabbage soup added like below. Add in meat, fish, seafood, get rid of the potato and the rice, vary your food a bit more than above and…there you have the paleo diet.

Recipe for cabbage soup ingredients

• 2 pints (1 liter) hot (boiling) vegetable stock
• olive oil
• 1 organic head cabbage
• 2 pounds (1 kg) fresh organic tomatoes
• 3 big organic onions
• 1 bunch organic celery
• 4 stems of organic leek
• 1 green organic pepper
• 1 red organic pepper
• 4 cloves garlic, peel removed
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon curry powder
• salt and pepper to taste

How to make cabbage soup

1. Slice the leek in rings and cut the onion and celery in cubes: when you have an (immersion) blender, you can chop the veggies less fine, hence work faster.
2. Put a little olive oil in a casserole with a thick bottom and sauté the onions, celery and leek on a low fire.
3. Stir in the cayenne pepper and curry powder after 5 minutes and let simmer for 5 minutes more. Add more oil if the spices stick too much on the bottom of your pot.
4. Meanwhile start slicing the rest of the vegetables – except the garlic – in strips and add after the onions and leek are sautéed.
5. Dice the tomatoes.
6. Add tomatoes, the still intact garlic cloves and vegetable stock and bring to a boil.
7. Cover the pot and simmer until the cabbage soup is ready (20 minutes when using a blender to 2 hours without using a blender: anything above 20 minutes depends on your cabbage, on the size of your cuttings and on how hard or how soft you want your vegetables to be when you aren’t using a blender).
8. Taste and add salt or pepper if needed. When available, purée your cabbage soup with an immersion blender.