Vegetarian Cabbage Soup with Savoy Cabbage and Peas

Vegetarian Cabbage Soup

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Homemade cabbage soup is a kind of vegetable soup made from familiar vegetables found in any refrigerator. What is special about such soups is that you can make them in hundreds of different ways, depending on your mood or which vegetables you have on hand. The soup is very healthy, like any other vegetable dish, and contains fiber, plenty of vitamins and trace elements.

Many different types and varieties of cabbage are used in cooking. The most common is white cabbage, available all year round. We barely finish last year’s cabbage before the young one appears, and so it goes year after year.

Vegetable soup with broccoli or Brussels sprouts is considered one of the tastiest and most refined vegetable soups. But in my opinion, the tastiest soup is made with Savoy cabbage. Savoy is a variety of garden cabbage that grows in large heads with huge outer leaves. It is easy to tell apart from white cabbage by its beautiful crinkled, or “crumpled”, leaves.

Savoy cabbage heads are not very dense, rather loose in fact. The leaves are very tender, slightly sweet, and hold their shape very well when cooked. For these reasons we make this soup specifically with Savoy cabbage. If you braise the leaves cut into strips with butter, you get an excellent cabbage side dish. Savoy leaves are also an excellent choice for cabbage rolls, much better than white cabbage leaves.

This is frying the main vegetables for the cabbage soup, which is often confused with sweating. It is only frying, whereas sweating is cooking in fat in order to draw the aromatic compounds out of the vegetables and enrich the fat with them, after which the whole mass is puréed and added to dishes that way. When frying, the goal is not a uniform mass; it is enough for the vegetables to become soft. Savoy cabbage soup with fried vegetables turns out very aromatic, thanks to the frying, and pleasing to look at.

More with cabbage

Ingredients

2 servings

  • Savoy cabbage 1 small head
  • Water 1 l (plus a little warm water to dilute the tomato paste)
  • Green peas 150 g (fresh or frozen)
  • Carrot 1
  • Onion 3
  • Hot pepper 1
  • Celery root 1 piece
  • Garlic 1-2 cloves
  • Dill, parsley 0.5 bunch
  • Vegetable oil 1 tbsp
  • Tomato paste 1 tbsp (or half a cup of natural tomato juice) (17 g)
  • Salt, black pepper, hot ground pepper to taste
  • Rye bread for serving

Step-by-step recipe

Frying and braising the vegetables

  1. For the tastiest cabbage soup, choose the freshest vegetables and herbs and a small head of Savoy cabbage. In season you can use fresh green peas, and in winter frozen ones work fine. Luckily, frozen peas are always available.

    Vegetables for the soup.

  2. Peel and cut the vegetables. Peel the onion, carrot and a small piece of celery root. Cut the hot pepper pod in half lengthwise and remove all the seeds and white inner membranes. Cut the carrot and celery root into thick strips. Cut the onion into strips lengthwise along the bulb, so the strips keep their shape when cooked. The hot pepper can be chopped finely.

    Vegetable strips.

  3. Fry the prepared vegetables over medium heat, stirring constantly. Pour a little vegetable oil into a small skillet, literally just under 1 tbsp. The oil should only lightly coat the bottom of the pan. The vegetables will soon soften and start to change color. Do not overfry them, or the soup will have a pronounced aftertaste.

    Frying the vegetables.

  4. Peel 1-2 garlic cloves and chop finely with a knife. Do not use a grater, as it gives too much garlic juice. Add the chopped garlic to the well-fried vegetables and season with a pinch of salt. Fry the vegetables with the garlic for 1-2 mins.

    Chopped garlic.

  5. Dilute 1 tbsp of tomato paste (17 g) with a little warm water. Alternatively, you can use half a cup of good natural tomato juice (100 ml). Add the tomato to the fried vegetables, stir well and braise the vegetables covered over the lowest heat. The carrot and celery root must be completely cooked, which usually takes 10-12 mins.

    Vegetables with tomato.

Cooking the soup

  1. While the vegetables are braising, bring 1 l of water to a boil in a pot, add the green peas and the Savoy cabbage, shredded as for chicken borscht. You can use a simple kitchen shredder or a chef’s knife. Salt the water with a pinch of salt and cook the cabbage with the peas over medium heat for about 15 mins. In that time the peas will cook and the cabbage will become soft.

    Cooked cabbage.

  2. Add all the fried and tomato-braised vegetables to the vegetable broth. Bring the soup to a boil and simmer over low heat for 8-10 mins. Season with more salt and pepper to taste; you can add some heat or fragrant herbs.

    Seasoned soup.

  3. Remove the pot from the heat and let the soup stand covered for 5-10 mins.

    Finished soup.

Serving

  1. Pick all the leaves off the dill and parsley sprigs and chop finely with a knife. Prepare fresh rye bread to serve with the soup at lunch. Ladle the soup into bowls and sprinkle generously with the chopped herbs. If you like spicy dishes, add a pinch of coarsely ground hot pepper. Serve the soup slightly cooled so it does not burn your tongue.

    cabbage soup

Calories and macros

320 kcal

Serving ≈ 1150 g

  • Protein14 g21% of kcal
  • Fat8 g26% of kcal
  • Carbs36 g53% of kcal

100 g28 kcalProtein 1.2 gFat 0.7 gCarbs 3.2 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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