Tomato Cabbage Soup Recipe with Chicken or Ground Beef

On a cold winter night, or a hot summer day, this soup is good anytime! Filled with fresh, nutrient dense, and delicious ingredients, this soup will help you stay slim, energized, and full. Fresh cabbage is an amazing vegetable filled with beta-carotene, vitamin C, and glucosinolates (that protect against cancer). Fresh tomatoes are also an excellent source of nutrients including potassium and the powerful antioxidant lycopene. So what are you waiting for? Let’s make some soup!

Cabbage, Chicken, and Tomato Soup with Barley Added

Ingredients

• 1 Head of Cabbage (cabbage is on the “Clean 15” list)
• 1 Bag of My Tomato Purée (or 2 16 oz. home canned jars, or organic BPA free jars from the store)
• 2 c. Chopped Celery (or whatever other vegetables you have lying around)
• 1 Whole Chicken or 1 lb Ground Beef (See my Roasted Chicken Recipe or Ground Beef Recipe)
• *Optional: 4 c. Properly Prepared Barley
• *Seasonings: I add most of my seasonings to my tomato purée, but if you’re used canned tomatoes without any seasonings, I would add the following:
  • 3 pods of Chopped Garlic
  • ½ c. Chopped Parsley (super duper healthy)
  • ½ c. Chopped Cilantro
  • 2 T. Real Salt (salt to taste)
  • 1 t. Pepper

Directions

1. Tomato Purée: Add the tomato purée to a large pot and start to warm it up at a low-medium heat.
   

   Tomato Purée

2. Add the Vegetables: Cut up the cabbage (shredding it is even better), chop the celery, and really go ahead and chop up any other vegetable you have in your fridge that sounds good like carrots, bok choy, leeks, green onion, etc. and throw them all in the pot.
3. Add the Meat (or not): Cut up the cooked chicken into bite sized pieces and add it to the pot. Or, if you’re going the ground beef way, add that to the pot. Or, just keep this a vegetarian dish, it will still taste great! (I have actually always used this recipe with ground beef until I just happened to have some extra chicken around, and it was simply amazing!)
   

   Roasted Chicken

4. Add the Seasonings: If you’re using my tomato purée recipe, you’ll already have most of your seasonings added, but if you’re using unseasoned tomatoes, add the garlic, cilantro, parsley, maybe a little dill, oregano, thyme, sage, or whatever other fresh herbs you might have lying around. Then add salt and pepper to suit your taste.
   

   Chopping Up Some Fresh Herbs

5. Simmer: Bring all of the ingredients to a slow boil, then turn down the heat to a low 2 or 3, cover, and let everything simmer for about 30 minutes. If I know that I’m going to be eating my soup for many days, I like to cook things really lightly at first so that every time I reheat it, all of the nutrients aren’t lost from over-cooking it.
   

   Cabbage Soup Simmering

6. Barley: I love adding barley to just about every soup because it’s so healthy and filling, but sometimes it can kind of take over the soup and then no one else wants to eat it but me! So, sometimes I’ll just cook the barley and leave it separate so that anyone who wants can go ahead and add a scoopful. See my recipe for properly preparing organic barley to get rid of the phytic acid here.
   

   Serve the Barley on the Side

7. Enjoy! This soup is good hot or cold. I really like eating mine with a toasted sourdough muffin with butter on the side.
   

   Cabbage Soup with Barley Added

Toasted Sourdough Muffins with Butter