I think we need to treat a cabbage soup recipe less like it’s a diet recipe and more like it’s a fantastic healthy soup that we should eat every once in a while and enjoy it, rather than down it for a week straight as part of a fad diet.

Checkered red kitchen cloth underneath cabbage soup in a bowl with a cabbage and carrots.

As a Ukrainian gal I am into cabbage soup as a meal, rather than cabbage soup as a diet. Cabbage Soup, AKA the soup that a diet ruined for everyone’s enjoyment. Let’s just take it back and place it into our monthly meal rotation, whether it’s Meatless Mondays or a great soup to enjoy during the cold weather.

Cabbage Soup – The Healthy, Awesome Soup That a Diet Wrecked

You know exactly what I’m talking about, as almost everyone has heard about the Cabbage Soup Diet. You know, I bet that the dumb fad diet ruined cabbage soup for tens of thousands of people. I have even seen it shared on Facebook this past January as the DIET SOUP! Cleanse Yourself after Christmas with cabbage soup!

How about we enjoy cabbage soup as a super healthy soup that’s great for lunch? I looooove cabbage soup. It’s delicious as all get out and it’s a really good lunch when you happen to want to eat fried chicken later on that night. Balance my friends, it’s all about trying to find that balance.

Nothing is delicious when you are forced to eat something for a week straight as part of a diet.

Checkered red kitchen cloth underneath cabbage soup in a bowl garnish with parsley leaves — Cabbage Soup with Parsley Garnish

How to Make Simple Cabbage Soup

The base ingredients for a cabbage soup recipe are sparse, you only really need five ingredients to make cabbage soup:

garlic
onions
cabbage
canned tomatoes
chicken broth

The rest can all be added in as you please. There is nothing wrong with making just the basic cabbage soup with the five ingredients above, just make sure that your chicken ( or vegetable) broth is strong and you have all the flavor you need.

The garlic, onions and cabbage are all wonderfully flavors that simmer together and bring robust flavor to the soup.

cabbage soup in a bowl garnish with parsley leaves — Cabbage Soup

Again, this is super healthy and I’m not surprised that it was featured in a diet that had you eating it for a week straight. I love cabbage soup, however there’s nothing that I can eat for three meals a day, seven days a week.

Except maybe ice cream. Is there an ice cream diet yet?

Other Ingredients You Can Include in Your Cabbage Soup

There are some ingredients that are commonly used in cabbage soup that I sometimes add, and I sometimes don’t. You can add in:

chopped carrots
chopped celery
chopped red pepper
mushrooms

The point to this soup is that it IS starch free, so most people don’t add potatoes to it. All of the above ingredients are in line with the diet (if you are doing the actual cabbage soup diet) and with Weight Watchers – a lot of people are now eating this soup because it is low or no points on Weight Watchers.

Tips & Tricks

How you chop the cabbage is up to you. Some recipes state to chop it finely, I prefer to give the soup some body and have larger chunks of cabbage.
You can make vegetarian/vegan cabbage soup by switching out the chicken broth for a vegetable broth.
You can simmer this in your slow cooker all day on low, or for 4-5 hours on high if you want to make a crockpot versions as well.
Feel free to play around with the spices, you can add some heat to it by using some Cayenne pepper, you can add in some oregano or basil, whatever you prefer in a soup.
Garnish with some fresh parsley to make it prettier. Man, this is a hard soup to photograph! These are actually new photos (this post is a year old) because the old ones were terrible!

I like to make a big batch of this cabbage soup and eat it for lunch for a few days! Mr Magpie and my son actually love this soup as well, so it was nice that there were three of us eating it throughout the week. We can’t get the Rose to touch it with a ten foot pole, but three out of four of us ain’t bad!

You can try my Ukrainian Cabbage Roll Soup if you want a heartier cabbage soup, or if you are wanting a good way to use up cabbage try my Homemade Coleslaw or my Bacon Wrapped Cabbage Wedges, those are a meal!

So forget the diet, make cabbage soup as something healthy to eat and enjoy!

Love,

Karlynn