Healthy Thanksgiving Soups

By Food & Wine
Updated May 24, 2017
Credit: JOHN KERNICK
From creamy winter squash soup to tea-scented pumpkin soup, here are terrific and healthy Thanksgiving soups.
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Winter Squash Soup with Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

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Chef Susur Lee is renowned for his creative, complex, Asian-inflected dishes at his restaurants in Toronto, Manhattan and Singapore. But one of his favorite cold-weather comfort recipes is this remarkably simple squash soup, which he sweetens with a little honey and garnishes with roasted pumpkin seeds.

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Creamy Broccoli Soup with Croutons

Credit: © Frances Janisch
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Marcia Kiesel’s luxuriously creamy soup is the perfect starters for Thanksgiving dinner because it can be made in advance, then reheated and garnished just before serving.

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Sweet Potato and Apple Soup

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White-Bean Soup with Bacon and Herbs

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A light broth loaded with chunky Great Northern beans and topped with a sprinkling of bacon, this soup was inspired by the caldo gallego (a Spanish white-bean soup) that chef Jose Garces serves.

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Cauliflower Soup with Pecans and Rye Croutons

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Mary Ellen Diaz usually ignored cauliflower when she worked as a high-end restaurant chef, but now she loves how it adds a natural, clean flavor to this luscious soup as well as lots of vitamins: Three florets provide close to half the daily requirement of vitamin C.

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Mixed Vegetable and Farro Soup

Credit: © Con Poulos
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Eataly’s vegetable counter specializes in vegan dishes—specifically, vegan dishes that people might not suspect are vegan. One is this thick, hearty soup made with a colorful mix of carrots, peas, leek and onion. Mario Batali also adds borlotti beans and farro, which make the soup hearty enough to be a main course. The crunchy grissini on the side aren’t vegan; they’re sweetened with honey.

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Winter Squash Soup with Porcini Cream

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The whimsical presentation of this dish gives maximum dramatic effect with a minimum of last-minute effort. Both the soup and hollowed-out squash can be reheated in a microwave oven.

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Chilled Fennel-Grapefruit Velouté with Lemon Olive Oil

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Lemon olive oil is used in two different ways: for sautéing fennel before pureeing it with grapefruit juice, and for garnishing the soup before serving.

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Creamy Carrot Soup with Scallions and Poppy Seeds

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Tea-Scented Pumpkin Soup

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Han Feng lightly flavors this silky, creamy soup with Ceylon tea, garnishing it with a drizzle of roasted pumpkinseed oil. She always restocks her supply of the lovely, nutty oil whenever she’s in New York.

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Mushroom-Barley Soup

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“Designer soups,” as Jordon Carroll calls chef-inspired pureed soups, often have lots of added butter and cream. She prefers old-fashioned ones like this mushroom-barley, which gets its flavor from good-quality beef stock.

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Pumpkin and Yellow Split Pea Soup

Credit: JOHN KERNICK
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In her reimagining of holiday pumpkin soup, F&W’s Melissa Rubel Jacobson adds pumpkin to dal—the spicy, soupy Indian legume dish. The result is a hearty, healthy soup with a lovely edge of sweetness.

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