Healthy Thanksgiving Soups

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

“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.

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.