My sister, Terri, sent me this super simple delicious recipe for Low Carb Broccoli Cheese Soup, and if you check out the comments below, you'll see how much everyone loves it. 🙂
Recently I adapted it a bit to make it a “creamy spinach Parmesan” soup and that was a hit, too. I'll include those instructions below.
Low Carb Broccoli Cheese Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 Tablespoons butter, pastured butter is best (read more about healthy fats and how they do NOT cause weight gain)
- 3 cups chicken broth (Here's how to make bone broth for rookies, or if you just don't think you will make it or want some on hand for when you're really crunched for time, try this bone broth — it's 100% grass-fed with a bunch of gelatin, organic ingredients, and it's shelf stable! I love keeping their beef and chicken broth on-hand for quick recipes because they make it just like I do here, and without the nasty msg-like ingredients, additives, or preservatives that store-bought has.)
- 8 ounces cream cheese (I use this kind)
- 1 cup heavy cream (not ultra-pasteurized! Read why that's baaaad))
- 2 cups shredded cheddar cheese (or Parmesan or any other cheese if desired)
- 2 bunches of fresh broccoli, chopped (or pureed spinach to switch it up, I've also made this with asparagus!)
Instructions
Heat broth and broccoli until broccoli is tender. Mix cream cheese, heavy cream, shredded cheese and butter in another pan and stir often. When broccoli is tender, put half in a blender and puree (this makes it a little thicker). When the other pan is melted, add to broth and broccoli (in the other pot). Garnish with more cheese. Add sea salt and pepper to taste.
Did you make a real food recipe?
I want to see it! Tag @KitchenKop on Instagram and hashtag it #KitchenKopRecipes OR share anything you know I’ll love by tagging @KitchenKop and hashtag #KitchenKop -- see you over there!
This is a 15-minute dinner and super simple, too!
- Still want to eat bread now and then? If so, did you know that THIS is the best bread you can eat? Get step-by-step instructions here: Homemade Sourdough bread.
- Click here for more low-carb recipe ideas – my favorites these days are the Crispy Roasted Brussels Sprouts, Kale Chips, and this pesto chicken or just cheesy chicken is SO easy, SO good and low-carb!
- Need some new and/or unique low-carb or paleo recipes? This cookbook has tons of fresh ideas: On an Upward Spiral. 40 “Zoodle” Recipes to Tempt and Tantalize & 40 Mouthwatering Spiralized Pasta Recipes. It was written by the guy who created these helpful gadgets (notice all the great reviews on both):
The Procizion Vegetable Spiral Slicer
and
The Procizion Digital Food Scale
If you're a low-carber or a no-grainer, you'll love the spiral slicer and the cookbook together for some great recipes to help get you out of a rut.
I love that the author is not afraid to use healthy saturated fats in his recipes like butter (pastured butter is best), coconut oil, olive oil, etc. Read more about healthy fats here.
- This new one isn't so low-carb (it's not real high in carbs though), but it sure is delicious: Healthy Broccoli Soup Recipe: Simple Cream of Broccoli Soup with Parmesan
- One more yummy broccoli recipe: Organic Broccoli Salad – this is full of great flavor!
Meal Planning Help!
Sick of planning meals and answering the question, “What am I going to feed these people?” No matter what kind of eater you are… Check out these affordable interactive easy-to-use meal plans where the work is done for you! Also read over my review to see what I thought of it.
Where in the States do you buy non ultrapasturized cream? Thanks.
I find it 3 different ways…
1. Raw cream from our raw milk farmer is available now and then, and that’s my first choice. (Find raw milk locally here: https://www.realmilk.com/real-milk-finder/)
2. A few stores around town (I live near Grand Rapids, MI) carry grass-fed pasteurized cream (not ultra-pasteurized), and that’s my 2nd choice. (Try your local health food store!)
3. My local grocery store does still carry a regular whipping cream that is pasteurized but not ultra-pasteurized, it’s the only grocery chain where I can find that at when I’m in a pinch, all the other grocery stores around us ONLY have the ultra.
Hope that helps,
Kelly
I made this for my husband and I for dinner today and it is sooooo good. We are both on low carb diets and have not found many recipes that are really good. This is so good. I used my food processor instead of the blender and it turned out to be the perfect thickness. We absolutely loved it and I am sure I will make this again and again. Thanks so much.
Woohoo! That’s great to hear, thanks Connie. 🙂
Kel
I love all the ingredients in this recipe and made it exactly as written. I like it but think the cream cheese took away from the cheddar taste, which I prefer in soups – but it make it thicker so that is a plus. I am low carbing so I make a pot of something I love at the first of the week so I have a quick go to for lunch during the week.
I think I will cut the cream cheese in half next time so it has more of a cheddar bite, but for this pot I added some chopped pickled jalapeños. It is now a spicy cheese soup.
Thanks for sharing the recipe.
Hi Nana,
What a great idea for giving it a good kick!!! 🙂
Kel
ebat is your carb count? And how many servings?
Nvm, I tried to delete post but couldn’t fig out how! My WHOLE family loved this soup!
Made this soup this morning. Mine came out with a very strong cream cheese taste.. Is this normal?? Not sure where I messed up!
Tasted way too much like cream cheese and it was real watery. Going to cut back on chicken broth and cream cheese and try again.
Wonderful- I refined this to meet my suburban Canadian taste by adding beer and a scant teaspoon of guar gum to the two cream cheese brick version.
On your Low Carb Broccoli Cheese Soup, you never mention how many carbs. if it’s low, then tell s.
Hi Pat,
Sorry about that, I asked my sister and she said she told me when she originally gave me the recipe, but I must have forgotten to post it.
Others in the comments have added what they thought the carb-count was, but it looks like there’s quite a difference between them.
Kelly
YUMMY! This is so good. I wasn’t sure how much two bunches of broccoli equaled since I was lazy and bought the bagged stuff. I pulsed my broccoli in the food processed to get the pieces small and used about 3 cups of broccoli for the soup. I also only had about 3 oz cream cheese so I used a little more whipping cream to make up for it. Also I added mustard powder to the cheese mixture. 🙂
I have been looking for an awesome cheese and broccoli recipe. I have found good ones in the past but not one that would become my go-to recipe in the end. The search is finally done! THIS IS IT. I am just a little bit excited. 😉 I now share this with all the LC’ers I know. The only think I do differently is add a little less broth to keep it thicker.
THANK YOU SO MUCH!
Hi! Just wanted to let you know that my husband and I tried this recipe. He doesn’t cook much, so I asked him to make it and he had no trouble at all with it, and it ended up turning out delicious! Thank you so much for posting it.
We added 3 cloves of minced garlic, and half a minced onion to the recipe and it was perfect. Wouldn’t change a thing!
My husband and I made this for dinner last night. It was great! We had it with a side of roasted turkey breast. The soup and turkey went so well together, we ending up tearing up the turkey and putting it in the soup. We will definitely be making this again. Thanks!
Making this now. adding sauteed onions and celery and garlic. Looks amazing so far!
Great recipe, perfect and easy to bring to work for lunch! I definitely want to try again when I find some heavy cream that is not ultra-pasteurized. I went to Marsh and Meijer, both only had ultra-pasturized cream. I may even add some pieces of chicken next time. I am also curious to know how others calculated the nutrition facts. I used the website below and entered 1 serving for the whole pot. I used about 3 cups of fresh, chopped broccoli I ended up getting 4 servings out of the pot
https://caloriecount.about.com/cc/recipe_analysis.php
Calories 2,525
Total Fat 226.5g
Total Carbohydrates 32.6g
Protein 98.1g
I forgot to add the fiber above. It is 6.9g
I’m not sure how everyone calculated the carbs….here is what I get for the full recipe as written:
calories 3007
fat 241.6
carbs 114
protein 120
My husbands thanks you! So simple and made on a work night. yum!
Thank you! I kinda fooled with the recipe a lot, but figured I’d add my thoughts as well. I made this with:
Mild cheddar (didn’t have sharp)
No heavy cream (though now that I’m at the bottom of the pot I could see the use of the extra liquid, though I think I’d add more broth for carbs’ sake).
Two small frozen packages of chopped broccoli (cheap! and no prep!)
One bouillon cube
Just used one pot.
It was great!
Omw…….delicious soup!! I’ve been low carbing it for a week now & this is my favorite soup & was so excited to give your recipe a try!! Not only is it a busy cooks dream to put together but so delicious as well. Thank you so much for sharing with all of us.
Oh my goodness. I’ve never made broccoli soup before and always wanted to try. I can’t believe how EASY this was and it’s FANTASTIC!!! Gonna let it cool, flavors meld and reheat for dinner (I admit, I snuck a bowl for lunch) I can’t wait!! Will definitely make this again 5 star all the way. Thank you so much.
Just made this- sooo delish and much easier than I would have thought it would be! Thanks for the great winter recipe! Question- does anyone know how this freezes?
We made this last night. It was easy and loved by all.Thanks for sharing!
Wow! I just made this and it is the best soup I have ever had!!! Thank you so much for the recipe!! I took another reader’s advice and just did 2 cups of chicken broth and it was perfect!
This is absolutely the best Broccoli Cheese Soup I have ever eaten in my life! Thank you for the recipe. The only thing I changed was lowering the chicken broth to 2 1/2 cups instead of 3 for a thicker soup. Excellent! I made 2 batches so I could have some throughout the week because I just started a low carb diet, unfortunately, my husband DEMOLISHED the entire container before I woke up the next morning. it is THAT good!
I also wanted to mention that the Walmart brand of heavy cream is the thickest on the market and makes the best cream soups.
Glad you liked it! The Walmart cream isn’t ultra-pasteurized is it? (I hope not!)
Kelly
Ummmm, yes, I just checked and it is ultra-pasteurized. However, I am not sure what that means or why it is not desirable. Can you please elaborate? Thanks.
Sure, check this out: https://kellythekitchenkop.com/2008/02/healthy-milk.html
Thanks for the information. I had no idea there was a difference.
I used Neufchâtel cheese instead of cream cheese, but otherwise I stuck to the recipe, and for the pot this is what I calculated in case anyone else wants the nutritionals:
Calories 2198
Fat 191.7
Carbs 42.7
Fiber 11.7
Protein 86.5
Definitely going to try this. I’ve been craving broccoli cheese soup, but couldn’t have it. This sounds perfect! Thanks.
Thank you! That was the best broccoli and cheese soup i ever ate!
Great recipe, added 1 onion & few cloves of
garlic to pressure cooker b4 adding broth &
Broccoli. Set for 5 min then users immersion
blender then stirred in chz mixture, I dbled
cream cheese so it was thicker. Very tasty..
& tasted even better the 2nd day. I served with
extra shredded sharp cheddar, another LC recipe
suggested uncured crumbled bacon, yum!
I calculated 23g net carbs for the whole thing. I got 4 two cup servings so it was 5.75g net per serving.
Thank you for figuring that out! 🙂
The broccoli alone is 80 carbs minus 32 net carbs so this is wrong.
Atkins.com shows 1/2 cut raw broccoli as 1g Net Carbs. So I’m not sure how you come up with 80. I don’t think 2 bunches of fresh broccoli = 40 cups. Can you help me understand your math. New to a low carb diet plan.
Depends on how much brocoli you choose to put in. I only used 100g which net carbs were 4.4g for the whole soup. I added 30g of spinach which was like 0.3g of carbs for the whole thing. So i think 5.75/6.5 g if carbs per serving is probably accurate. Maybe less if you like me and had only a cup perserving.
How many carbs per serving?
If you sit down and figure this up, let us know. We haven’t done that, but I’m sure it’s low. 🙂
Made this soup tonight. It was SO good!!! For my 3 sons and husband, who aren’t on a low carb diet, I made a roux and thickened some of the soup and served it over whole grain pasta for a yummy broccoli cheese alfredo dish!
Good job making it work well for the whole family!
Thanks to those of you reviewers who actually TRIED the recipe before commenting. That’s useful!
My daughters said this was better than Panera’s. I even caught DH eating some.
Beth, hmmmm, I don’t know if I’d use this in the crockpot except on a “keep warm” setting… If you try it, let us know! 🙂
Soli, yes, homemade cream cheese is best, but I cheat on that a lot and just make sure to by the regular, not low fat, obviously.
Sandy, yes, anything but Velveeta! LOL!!
MMMM Thanks!! I love it! I’ve been wanting to make brocoli cheese soup and I realized that all recipes online say Velveeta. I was planning on substituting the cheeses too! Glad to have it here all laid out 🙂
That sounds great! I take it the cream cheese here should be traditional?
Thanks, Kelly. Now I know what we’re having for dinner tomorrow :). I think I’ll try to tweak it for the crockpot… Any ideas for that? Maybe wait and add the cheese shortly before serving? Beth