Out of the pot, this brown rice cream of broccoli soup is full of surprises. It’s smoky flavored, fragrant, vegan, and gluten-free.
You will be pleasantly surprised to hear that this is not one of those cheesy broccoli soups. In fact, I’m sure you’re going to like this healthier cream of broccoli soup better than the cheesy ones.
A few weeks ago, I got a bag of organic short grain brown rice flakes (by Eden Foods) from my mother-in-law. The easiest way to try something new is to follow the recipe on the back of the package. Cheating?
There’s no sense in reinventing the wheel. Right? Sometimes it’s better to take what has already been discovered and improve on it. In this case, I got inspired from this recipe and made a few tweaks.
Here are my main ingredients for this brown rice cream of broccoli soup:
Yellow onion
Broccoli
Frozen corn kernels
Brown rice flakes
Unsweetened coconut shreds
Basil flakes
I like how quickly the brown rice flakes cook and give the soup a nice thick texture. The beauty of making the broccoli soup is that almost no broccoli goes to waste. You don’t have to worry about the broccoli stems because once they’re cooked with the rest of the ingredients, it will be transferred into a blender, such as vitamix, and get blended until smooth.
For a little creative fun, I sprinkled some smoked paprika powder and chopped roasted almonds before serving. The smoked paprika powder adds an intense smoky flavor to the soup. I personally loved it. Hope you do too.
- 5 cups water
- 1 teaspoon oil
- ½ small yellow onion minced
- 2 cloves garlic minced
- ½ tablespoon minced ginger
- 12 oz broccoli chopped
- ½ cup unsweetened coconut shreds
- ¾ cup brown rice flakes
- ⅔ cup frozen corn kernels
- 1 teaspoon basil
- ½ teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon chopped roasted almonds
- 1 small bunch chives
- 1 pinch smoked paprika powder
- In a saucepan, bring 5 cups of water to a boil.
- Meanwhile, heat a skillet over high heat until smoky hot. Add oil and wait 15 seconds until the oil is hot. Add minced onion, garlic, and ginger. Stir-fry over medium heat until fragrant, 3 minutes.
- Transfer the sauteed onion, garlic, ginger, and the remaining ingredients, except garnishing ingredients (if any), into the boiling water. Bring the soup to a boil again, reduce the heat to medium-low and let it simmer for 12 minutes or until the brown rice flakes are cooked.
- Transfer the hot soup into a heat-resistant blender and blend until smooth. At this point, if you’d like to have your soup with some chunky texture, blend only ⅔ of the soup in a blender and then mix it together.
- (optional) Garnish and serve hot.