Healthy Vegan Vegetable Noodle Soup!
The Vegetable Broth / Stock
Slowly simmered aromatics and herbs give this broth deep layers of flavors brought together by a generous sprinkling of nutritional yeast. If you aren’t a fan of nooch you can leave it out of course. Do your best to find some celery and parsley root, together with the carrot, onion and bay leaves you have some real magic going on in there.
I also added just a touch of turmeric to get that golden color, I didn’t want it to alter the classic flavor i was after, so take care not to use too much of it. The trick here is in slowly simmering the broth for a good hour or so to reduce slightly and allowing the flavors to concentrate.
How to Store Vegetable Broth:
The broth can be made in advance and frozen in large ice cube trays for later use. Whenever you are in the mood for noodle soup simply take out a few cubes, bring to a simmer and add your favorite noodles.
Choosing the Noodles:
- My first choice here are the long and thin egg free angel hair noodle nests. This is most definitely because there is an element of nostalgia to them for me. It’s how I remember Sunday’s noodle soup that my grandma made using the thin long noodles made on Saturday and allowed to dry overnight on a clean handmade hemp tablecloth.
- I also remember tiny little star shaped pasta and “ acini de pepe” grandma also used to make. So for my soul it has to be one of those shapes to really hit the spot.
All things considered, you can play around with different egg free pasta shapes of your choosing here. I suspect any mini sea shells, cavatelli or ditalini pasta would play really nice in this super flavorful vegetable broth.
Vegan Vegetable Noodle Soup Variations:
- You can replace the noodles in the recipe with some of your favorite whole grains, peas or potatoes. Cooked brown or wild rice, farro, barley, chickpeas or golden potatoes would make for a really hearty soup. Whatever variation you choose I think you’ll really love this clean, cruelty-free and good for you alternative to classic chicken noodle soup.
- If you grew up with shredded chicken in your soup and would like to replicate that texture, I suggest using soy curls. Soak them in hot water for 20 minutes until rehydrated, drain and squeeze all excess water then shred them into thinner strips. Add them to the pot with the broth in the last 15 minutes of cooking so they can absorb all the wonderful flavors.
Vegan Vegetable Noodle Soup
Ingredients
- 5 qt filtered water + more
- 1 yellow onion cut in half
- 1 parsley root quartered
- 1 small celery root about 1 cup size
- 3 carrots peeled & sliced into 1/3 inch rounds
- 2 ribs celery chopped
- 3 cloves garlic
- 3 leaves bay
- 2 mini sweet peppers or 1/2 red bell pepper
- 1 roma tomato halved (optional)
- 10 sprigs fresh thyme
- 2 tsp peppercorns
- 1/8 tsp turmeric for color (optional)
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
- 2 tsp onion powder
- 4 tbsp nutritional yeast
- 1/2 cup fresh Italian parsley roughly chopped
- sea salt & black pepper to taste
- 8 oz angel hair noodle nests vegan
Instructions
- Bring out your large heavy bottom stock up.
- Place the onion, parsley and celery root, chopped celery ribs, carrots, garlic, bay leaves, thyme, peppers, tomato and peppercorns inside of the pot. Fill with the filtered water and bring to a simmer. Add the garlic and onion powders, partially cover with a lid and cook on low flame for 45 minutes until all the vegetables have softened and the broth has reduced a couple of inches.
- Stir in the turmeric and nutritional yeast and simmer another 15 minutes or so.
- Fish out the bay leaves, thyme sprigs, onion and garlic cloves and discard. You can choose to discard the parsley and celery root or dice up and return into the soup. Feel free to also strain the soup if desired but not necessary.
- Taste the soup and season with sea salt and freshly cracked black pepper.
- When ready to serve bring the broth to a simmer and add the angel hair noodle nests. Cook for a couple of minutes until the noodles are al dente taking care not to overcook them. Serve hot with fresh parsley and cracked black pepper on top.