Name: 5-Ingredient Creamy Dairy-Free Celery and Leek Soup
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 4
Ingredients: 1 lb = 450 g celery; 1 medium leek; 3 cups = 700 ml vegetable bouillon, bone broth, or chicken stock; 4 oz = 115 g coconut manna (i.e., coconut butter); 1/2 cup = 120 ml chopped fresh parsley, loosely packed

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Soups are perfect all-year-around dishes. In the wintertime, they warm you up, while in the summertime, they work as light lunches. Pack some soup with you in a thermos and take for a trip or as a lunch to-go.

This easy and nourishing celery and leek soup calls for only 5 ingredients. Creamy and satisfying, the soup is also perfect for those who avoid dairy. Naturally low in carbs, it’s wonderful for anyone who wants to reduce all types of sugars in their diet.

How to make this Creamy Dairy-Free Celery and Leek Soup

With only a few ingredients, this soup is easy to make: chop the veggies in pieces, cook, and puree with an immersion blender or in a regular blender. That’s it! A big batch of nourishing and satisfying soup is ready.

The soup also stores well: you can store it a few days in the fridge, or freeze portion-wise for a later use.

Notice that the fresh parsley is added in the end, after cooking the celery and the leek. There are a few reasons for this. First of all, fresh parsley just tastes so much better than cooked parsley. As the herb is mild, we want to get all the taste out of this seasoning, and since fresh parsley has more taste than cooked parsley, we’ll add it in the end, just before pureeing the soup.

Moreover, fresh parsley provides beautiful, green color for the otherwise pale soup. And last but not least: cooking destroys some important nutrients, so as we want to keep the soup as nourishing as we can, we don’t cook the parsley but use an ample amount of fresh parsley that is super-high in nutrients.

If you have been following me, you might remember that I’ve used coconut manna also before in soups. And if you know about my Ketokamu activities and our commercial vegetable soups Kukkis and Parsis, you know that we use also coconut manna as a natural thickener and a fat source in our keto soups. Even coconut manna (i.e. pureed coconut flesh) has a slightly sweet taste, it’s perfect for savory foods as well.

But without further ado, let’s take a look at how to prepare this superb and satisfying soup:

Take 1 medium leek.

Clean it.

Chop it into largish pieces.

Put the pieces into a medium saucepan.

Take about 1 pound (450 g) celery.

Clean it, and chop also into largish chunks.

Place the chunks also into the saucepan.

Add also 4 oz (115 g) coconut manna (i.e., coconut butter) into the saucepan.

Finally, add 3 cups (about 700 ml) vegetable bouillon, bone broth, or chicken stock to the saucepan.

Mix well.

Bring to a boil over high heat.

Once boiling, reduce the heat to medium low. Let simmer, covered, until the veggies are soft, about 30 minutes.

Remove from the heat.

Add 1/2 cup (120 ml) chopped fresh parsley.

Puree with an immersion blender or in a regular blender until smooth.

Like this.

Serve.

How I came up with this creamy keto celery and leek soup recipe

I love soups. They are simple, easy-to-make, and versatile. No wonder our first commercial Ketokamu products were soups as they are so simple and nourishing food. They are easy to tweak as well by adding seasonings, veggies, or meat for even more satisfying meal. At home, when making soup, you can throw all kinds of tasty stuff to soups and make them as light or as stuffing as you want.

For years, I have written down lots of ideas for keto soup recipes. Now, when the weather has been relatively cold and particularly snowy, I thought it’s about a time to make a hot and nourishing soup.

I went through my idea list and found a draft for a soup containing leek and fennel. Actually, we have been thinking of bringing a Ketokamu soup with leek and fennel to the market — maybe with goat cheese for protein and more taste. I actually made a few experiments last year but wasn’t completely satisfied with them yet.

However, for my blog, I thought I skip the goat cheese and make a creamy soup without the tangy and admittedly a bit peculiar taste of goat cheese. However, since many people avoid dairy, I wanted to create a creamy soup without dairy products. In many creamy dairy-free keto recipes, dairy is replaced with coconut cream or coconut milk. But, this time, I chose to use coconut manna to hit two birds with one stone: coconut manna would provide creaminess and it would also work as a natural thickener.

For the soup, I was planning to use leek, fennel, coconut manna, vegetable bouillon, and an ample amount of parsley. I chose a herb, i.e. parsley, for a seasoning because it’s mild tasting — like the other ingredients in this soup — and simply high in nutrients like all herbs. Parsley is actually one of my favorite herbs. I can eat easily a bunch of fresh parsley in one sitting!

I was already about to conduct my first experiment, but after my Greek friend sent me a link about a dish with pork, celery, and leek, I thought why not use celery instead of fennel? Celery has a milder taste unlike fennel, that has a characteristic, anise-like flavor which many people despise. And celery and leek simply sounded like a great combo!

After re-calculating the ingredients, I was now finally ready to conduct the first experiment. For that, I had reserved 1 lb (450 g) celery, 1 medium leek, 3 cups (about 700 ml) chicken stock, 4 oz (115 g) coconut manna, and 1/2 cup (120 ml) chopped parsley.

I chopped the leek and the celery and placed into a saucepan. I poured in the chicken stock and tossed in the coconut manna. I boiled the whole thing about a half an hour, until the veggies were soft. My plan was to add the parsley in the end, to keep the taste fresh and not to destroy the valuable nutrients.

I pureed the soup with an immersion blender. I was surprised that the parsley didn’t blend in completely, but stayed as tiny, green spots. Well, better this way: the soup looked much more appealing – almost cute – with those green-colored dots.

Since my chicken stock was quite salty, there was no need to add any salt to the soup. The taste was even better I had expected and the texture was nicely thick and spoonable. The coconut manna lent richness and creaminess, and the veggies simply tasted delicious. The parsley was just the right herb to add mild flavor to the soup. Wonderful! I was so happy that the first experiment turned out so well — there really was nothing to improve!

5-Ingredient Creamy Dairy-Free Celery and Leek Soup

Yield: 4

Prep Time: 10 minutes

Cook Time: 25 minutes

Total Time: 35 minutes

Ingredients

1 lb = 450 g celery
1 medium leek
3 cups = 700 ml vegetable bouillon, bone broth, or chicken stock
4 oz = 115 g coconut manna (i.e., coconut butter)
1/2 cup = 120 ml chopped fresh parsley, loosely packed

Instructions

Clean the celery and leek and chop into large pieces.
Combine the celery, leek, liquid, and the coconut manna in a medium saucepan.
Bring to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, reduce the heat to medium-low. Let simmer, covered, for 20-30 minutes, or until the vegetables are completely soft.
Add the parsley and puree with an immersion blender or in a regular blender until smooth.
Serve. The soup stores well and tastes even better the next day.

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Nutrition information	In total	Per serving if 4 servings in total
Protein	21.2 g	5.3 g
Fat	79.9 g	20.0 g
Net carbs	21.9 g	5.5 g
kcal	938 kcal	235 kcal

Tips for variation

This soup is quite mild tasting, making it suitable for the whole family. My 9-year-old son totally loved this soup! However, feel free to add more spices if you love some kick. Even just a crack of black pepper lends more flavor.

To make the soup even more satisfying, add crumbled fried bacon, or cubed goat cheese or feta cheese on top when serving. Also sliced salami or ham provide some texture and make the soup a complete meal. I have to think also halves of boiled eggs, they might be a nice addition.

Instead of soup, you can make mashed leek and celery by reducing the amount of liquid. So, instead of 3 cups (about 700 ml) of vegetable bouillon, bone broth, or chicken stock, use just 1 cup (240 ml). Adjust the amount of fluid to reach the consistency you like.

If you don’t like coconut or if you cannot find coconut manna, you can use 1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream instead. In that case, reduce the amount of other liquid (i.e. the bouillon, stock, or broth) and use just 2 cups (350 ml).

General prattling

On Sunday, at the time of my previous blog post, I was giving a whole day keto course to the students of the institute from which I also graduated a few years ago. The students liked the course – which made me really happy.

Monday, I was in Bistro Naapuri here downtown in Tampere, letting the bistro customers taste our Ketokamu chocolates. I had made those chocolates with my melanger and with my DIY 3D-printed Ketokamu chocolate molds.

We gathered feedback from people and wanted their opinion of the chocolates. Each customer got a small bag with two different chocolates (berry and coconut) and a short questionnaire to fill. I was surprised that people liked both of the chocolates.

Our chocolates are not that sweet like current commercial sugar-free chocolates on the market, but most of the people thought the sweetness was just spot-on! I totally wonder that the current commercial chocolates are that overtly sweet — even unnaturally sweet — so our aim is to wean off people from those too sweet flavors and introduce them to a more natural world of sweetness. For our Ketokamu chocolates, we get flavor with natural ingredients, like berries, so we don’t need to add sweeteners to give our chocolate some taste.

Later this week, we recorded some videos about our Ketokamu soups. We had the same photographer than last week. He came to visit me and we shot some short videos in my living room. We were actually using two cameras, his camera and my camera to get some different angles. Unfortunately, I didn’t take any behind-the-scenes photos of that session, just the soup ingredients on the table.