This quick cooking, cheese topped soup is comfort food good + super nutritious too

If you like French Onion soup, you will love this broccoli based quick-cook variation! Lightly cooked broccoli and topped with quick melting Gruyère, then dusted with nutmeg and pepper feels like deeply satisfying comfort food, while delivering a powerful dose of nutrition.

Broccoli is packed with anti-inflammatory sulfur-containing compounds along with a plethora of antioxidants, vitamins and minerals. With exceptionally high concentrations of vitamin K (245%), vitamin C (135%), chromium (53%), folate (42%), fiber (21%) and pantothenic acid (19%) and good amounts of many other nutrients, broccoli is an truly exceptionally nutritious food.

Although this soup can be made without the cheese topping if you’re lactose intolerant (just don’t skip the ghee base and nutmeg), for the rest of us this is a great opportunity to put the decadently delicious food to work. Cheese will aid your body in absorbing the myriad fat-soluble vitamins so neatly contained in broccoli. If you get good Gruyère or Comté, you’ll also be getting the added bone health benefits that come with consuming raw dairy – vitamin K2, only substantially present in dairy in it’s raw fermented form. Hooray for raw aged cheese.

Cooking Notes

The Cheese

As I already mentioned above, the addition of cheese not only makes this soup rich and delicious, but it also aids in absorption of all the precious nutrients in the soup. In particular, with the bio-availbailty of the uniquely high vitamin K content in broccoli. So don’t skip the cheese! If you can eat cheese, this is a great time to exercise that freedom.

If Gruyère is not available, sub with your choice of semi-soft, mild and sweet flavored cheese. If you’re a Monterey Jack or Comté cheese fan, either would be a delicious substitute.

The Broccoli

As always, be sure to buy organic. With broccoli in particular, studies have proven that organically farmed broccoli contains more vitamins, minerals and other nutrients.

Don’t overcook the broccoli! You want to have a soft enough texture to compliment the soup, but the shorter the cook time, the more nutrients this veggie will retain.

If you’re interested in getting maximum nutrition out of the broccoli, steam it for 5 minutes and add the broccoli, complete with steaming water, to the remaining cooked ingredients in the soup before serving.

The Bone Broth

You’ll hear me say it time and again, but bone broth is truly the foundation of any nourishing soup and can’t be stressed enough. With this soup in particular, the minerals, collagen and myriad nutrients found in authentic bone broth together with the saturated fat in cheese, allow for an especially effective delivery of bio-available nutrients in this soup.

For the highest quality bone broth, as always, I recommend you make a big batch of your own Homemade Bone Broth. Alternatively you can consider stocking up on Epic’s Homestyle Savory Chicken Bone Broth from Thrive Market or found at Whole Foods.

Although nothing compares to homemade broth, Epic offers some of the best and most affordable readymade bone broths I’ve tasted – plus they come packaged in glass jars, not aluminum lined boxes!

Note to avoid the Kettle & Fire broth – despite their marketing the stuff doesn’t taste anything like bone broth.

The Pasta

I prefer this soup without pasta, but my husband really likes it over these wonderfully doughy gluten free pasta shells from Ancient Harvest. They’re really delicious, with a creamy texture reminiscent of gnocchi, and widely available at health foods stores and Whole Foods, or simply order on Amazon or Thrive Market. Just be sure to get the ones made with corn & quinoa.