Soup Green Vegetarian

Broccoli soup

Name: Broccoli soup
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 20 min
Total time: 30 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: International
Ingredients: 1 pcs Broccoli; 1 pcs Potato; 1 pcs Onion; 30 g Butter; 900 ml Water; 150 ml Milk; 6 g Salt; 2 g Black pepper

One rule for keeping it green: no lid, and not a minute over eight.

Soups · International · Under 30 minutes · One pot · Seasonal

30 minTime

152Kcal / serving

609Total kcal

Preparation: 10 min
Cooking: 20 min
Difficulty: Needs attention
Cost: Cheap
Season: Autumn, Winter

Where this dish comes from

Broccoli’s green is chlorophyll, and chlorophyll meeting acid loses its magnesium atom and becomes pheophytin — olive drab. Cooking broccoli releases the acids in its own cells, and under a lid those acids condense and come back to kill the colour. Leaving the lid off lets them go. It is one of the few places where a rule of chemistry is directly visible on the plate.

Method

Before the heat goes on

Break the broccoli into florets and peel and dice the thick stalk: the stalk is not waste, it is the sweetest part.
Dice the potato small so it cooks in twelve minutes.

You will need: A pan · A stick blender

Soften the onion in the butter for five minutes, add the potato and water and boil twelve minutes.

Look for The potato should crush easily under a fork.

Why The potato is the body of the soup: its starch goes into the water and builds the texture, which is why no flour or cream is needed.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
Add the broccoli and cook seven minutes with the LID OFF. Not a minute longer.

Look for The broccoli should go bright green and still meet slight resistance on a fork.

Why Broccoli’s own acids leave with the steam, and a lid sends them back, turning chlorophyll into pheophytin and the colour olive. The time is part of the same rule: past ten minutes it yellows anyway.

If it went wrong

Once the colour has turned it does not come back. Finish that batch with plenty of pepper and a spoon of butter and eat it; for the colour, next time take the lid off and time it.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back
Blend it smooth, add the milk, salt and pepper and warm it two minutes without boiling.

Look for It should come out velvety; more than thirty seconds of blending overworks the potato starch and turns it gluey.

Why The milk goes in last and unboiled: cooked long against broccoli’s sulphur compounds it can curdle, and it develops a heavy smell.

Starch gelatinised The granules soaked up water, swelled and burst into a network. It has thickened, and it will firm further as it cools. no way back

Salt · 0.34% Low. Everything reads flat and nothing steps forward.

What the model could follow

This recipe was run through the engine step by step — what goes in when, and at what temperature and for how long. The reactions above come from that run.

peak 98 °C · 26 minutes · engine 1.0.0 · confidence low

Servings

4

Ingredients

1 pcs Broccoli
1 pcs Potato
1 pcs Onion
30 g Butter
900 ml Water
150 ml Milk
6 g Salt
2 g Black pepper

What did you think

Who is eating

Everyone A baby under one Pregnant A child An athlete

We hold no safety rule for this group that a dish could break — training, or an age, does not make food dangerous. The thresholds below are about the person rather than about the dish.

Not about the dish — about the person

Protein in a day

0.83 g/kg

An adult Context established

Per day, 0.83 g for every kilogram of body weight — about 58 g a day for somebody of 70 kg. This is a floor: the amount that prevents a shortfall, not an optimum.

European Food Safety Authority, Dietary Reference Values for protein, 2012

Salt in a day

5 g 2000 mg

An adult Context established

Under 5 g of salt a day, which is under 2000 mg of sodium — just under a teaspoon. A label usually gives sodium, and the two are not the same number: salt is about 2.5 times the sodium.

World Health Organization, Salt reduction

What is done, and what is not: There is no calorie target here: daily energy need depends on age, body composition and training volume, and a figure written without them is a guess that looks certain. The protein calculation is offered because it rests on a sourced range and a single input. Supplements, and rapid weight cutting in weight-class sports, are conversations to have with a professional.

This choice is not stored anywhere.

Diets

Gluten-free Suitable as it is
Vegan Suitable with a substitution Butter, Milk Instead: Butter → Olive oil / Tahini; Milk → Oat milk
Vegetarian Suitable as it is
Lactose-free Suitable with a substitution Milk Instead: Milk → Oat milk
Diabetes-friendly It depends Quickly digested starch. Cooling it builds resistant starch, and fat, protein, fibre or acid alongside it flattens the curve.

This verdict comes from the recipe\u2019s own ingredient list. The label on a packaged ingredient is always the last word.

What a swap costs

Butter → Olive oil No reaction in this recipe is lost. +12 kcal · +1.4 g fat · +0.0 g protein
Butter → Tahini No reaction in this recipe is lost. -9 kcal · -2.1 g fat · +1.2 g protein
Milk → Oat milk No reaction in this recipe is lost. -4 kcal · -0.2 g fat · -0.9 g protein

Computed weight for weight. A ratio per pair would be better, and there is no sourced table of them, so the assumption is stated rather than hidden.

Calculated nutrition

152.2 kcal
5 g Protein
18.1 g Carbohydrate
7.8 g Fat
3.9 g Fibre

Per serving, computed from raw weights as bought. Cooking drives water off and sometimes adds fat, and neither is accounted for.

composition figures unsourced · held in the system

After the heat goes off

Serving

Hot, with grated kaşar or a scatter of toasted almonds. Nothing sour: lemon kills the colour too.

Keeping · 2 days

Two days in the fridge, though the colour turns noticeably by the second. For the colour it wants eating the same day.

Cooling and reheating

Low flame, no boiling. Every reheating takes a little more of the colour.

Does not freeze

Not for the freezer: the milk separates and the colour goes completely.

What is left

Reduced it becomes a pasta sauce, or mashed with a boiled egg it becomes a sandwich filling.

For a child

From eight months for a baby: unsalted, without the milk and blended completely smooth. For 12–36 months lift their share before the salt. Broccoli’s sulphur smell is heavy going for some children; if so raise the potato and cut the broccoli — a rejected bowl is an uneaten bowl.

If you have not got it

Broccoli → Cauliflower The same recipe works with cauliflower and the colour problem disappears: you can use a lid, and the time goes up to ten minutes.
Milk → Oat milk Oat milk is the lactose-free answer and cannot curdle.

Where to go from here

Boiling & poaching The method this recipe rests on
Broccoli What it does in heat, water and acid
Milk What it does in heat, water and acid
Potato What it does in heat, water and acid
Vegetable soup Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Pumpkin soup Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Mushroom soup Similar method, or something that sits on the same table
Under 30 minutes Other recipes that answer the same need
One pot Other recipes that answer the same need
Seasonal Other recipes that answer the same need

Taste profile

What it tastes like

No axis sits clearly above the average: a balanced recipe.

Sweet 16
Salty 9
Sour 1
Bitter 12
Umami 12
Heat 5
Richness 19
Aroma 22

This profile is computed rather than measured: the role-weighted average of its ingredients’ taste vectors, shifted by what the cooking does. The thin line is the database average on that axis.

Computed similarity