Last week, I received a suggestion from a friend for a turkey cheeseburger soup recipe by Gina Homolka of SkinnyTaste. I say “last week” because I also discovered last week that the blender which came with our condo did not work. I’d only used it once in the last 5 years to make knock-off margaritas, so *shrug*.
Thus, I’m only now trying out the recipe because the Ninja blender I ordered arrived. I got mine as a “member’s only” option online at Costco, but it looks like it’s available anywhere else for the same price.
The way I made this soup, it seems to be about 620 calories for 1/2 portion (of the entire batch), but we ended up only eating a quarter (with 1/4 cup cheese each) so…get a calculator, I guess?
Results: It was pretty good and we’ll be having leftovers tomorrow.
UPDATE: Still good the second time I made it a few days later. Leftovers were great both times.
INGREDIENTS
I more or less followed the SkinnyTaste recipe, although I swapped out butter for margarine, added way more garlic, and a few other changes I note.
Note: the SkinnyTaste recipe has what seems like great recommendations for cage free broth and gluten free brands that I didn’t end up using here. Below is what I used based on what I had after a haphazard trip to the grocery store.
(Calories are estimated…and now updated)
- 1/2 pound 93% lean ground turkey (464 cal)
- Note: the second time I made this, I used 10oz instead of 8oz and the meat proportion ratio was better. Would increase calories slightly.
- 1 tablespoon light margarine (36 cal)
- Note: you can get away without this by either leaving in some turkey juice or just using calorie-free cooking spray.
- 1 medium onion, chopped (yellow) (115cal)
- 2 medium carrots, chopped (50 cal)
- 2 celery stalks, chopped (20 cal)
- so many garlic cloves, minced (idk, I didn’t bother adding calories)
- 2 tablespoons all-purpose flour (30 cal)
- salt to taste (start small, you can always add more later)
- Black pepper to taste
- 3 1/2 cups Chicken Broth (36 cal)
- 10 ounces gold potatoes, 2 medium, peeled and finely diced (220 cal)
- 12-ounce wedge cauliflower (1/4 of a large head), stem attached (36 cal)
- 1/4 cups shredded triple cheddar cheese (Lucerne) (220 cal)
- 2 tablespoons chopped scallions, for garnish (15 cal)
Extras I’d suggest:
- red pepper flakes/chili pepper to taste or
- 1/2 serrano pepper and just red pepper flakes for a little zing
- Cilantro (assuming it doesn’t taste like soap/poison for you)
Prep Work
This prep took me about 25 minutes, but I wasn’t exactly rushing, and I was taking pictures at the same time.
Peel the potatoes and dice them (or just small chunks so they can cook through). Set into bowl by themselves for later.
Peel the carrots and chop as small as you like. I don’t really like cooked carrots, so I made mine pretty small. Stick them in a medium bowl (you’ll be adding the onion/celery/garlic with it).
Wash the 2 celery stalks and chop them up. Stick in the bowl with the carrots.
Dice the medium onion. I went with a yellow onion because the recipe didn’t state which color, and yellow is pretty neutral. Red onions are WAY TOO STRONG for almost everything, and while I love white onions…I don’t know, I guess I figured I’d give yellow a try. Stick in the bowl with the carrots and celery.
Garlic. I laugh when recipes call for just 2 cloves of garlic. Why bother adding garlic at all if you’re just adding 2 cloves?
Like Nat’s What I Reckon says, add as much garlic as you f*cking like. I certainly did. Mince it, then stick it in the bowl with the other veggies.
Cut the cauliflower in half, and then half again. Mine came out to 13 oz for a quarter. The recipe calls for 12 oz, so I figured that was close enough. It said to include the stalk, so I left the leaves on as well.
I’ve never eaten cauliflower before, and in this recipe it’s apparently supposed to act like a replacement for cream so…I’m willing to give it a shot. Hopefully, this soup is good, because otherwise I’m going to have to find some other cauliflower recipes for the rest of the head.
Sauté Time
It’s probably too late now, but be sure to defrost your turkey before this step if you froze it before cooking. Since I bought everything last week and had to put my plans on hold due to the blender fiasco, I forgot to take it out of the freezer this morning. So, I did the rapid defrost option of lukewarm sink water while I prepped the veggies. Not ideal, but it got the job done.
I’ve also never used the sauté feature on my instant pot. A lot of firsts for this recipe.
Plug in the instant pot, click ‘sauté’, and then it beeps a lot and eventually says ‘on’ and 30 (at least, mine did). I assume that means it’s set to sauté for 30 minutes unless told otherwise. It took a minute, maybe less, to heat up.
Sauté the ground turkey and brown it, using a wooden spoon for a few minutes until done.
I didn’t have a wooden spoon, so I used the other end of a spatula. I also cheated a bit and used some PAM spray beforehand on the pot because I didn’t know how much the turkey would stick on the bottom. Honestly, it probably wouldn’t have been an issue.
Drain the turkey and set aside in a bowl.
Add in the margarine/butter, melt it a bit, and sauté the veggies until they’re soft (a few minutes). UPDATE: The second time I made this, I just used calorie free cooking spray instead of margarine and it was fine. Save where you can!
Add in 2T flour. I don’t really know what it does for the soup at this stage. I assume it thickens it? Except, you cook it off and it’s put in before the liquid is added…I have no idea. I’m no chef, and I could probably Google it, but I also don’t really care. I trust the recipe.
Add salt and pepper at this point and stir/wait for the allotted minute until the flour is no longer discernable. The veggies did have a bit of a paste-like consistency after a minute, so I guess the flour was working as intended (whatever that intention was).
Put it All Together
Add the turkey.
Add 3.5 cups of chicken broth. I had fat free/low sodium generic chicken broth, so that’s what I used. It won’t exactly pack a flavor wallop, but it gets the job done.
Add the potatoes.
I’m only adding pictures at this point because I took them.
Mix
Set the cauliflower in the middle.
Set to manual/high pressure cooking for 10 minutes (takes about 20 or so to fully cook/get to pressure). Hit “cancel” on the bottom right corner to swap over to manual pressure cooking.
For reference, it took a minute for this thing to de-pressurize when I set the insta-pot to “vent”. It was long enough that I nearly googled how long this was supposed to take. Update: it still took forever the second time around, so that’s just how it is.
Simmering & Blending
Okay, so at this point, you’re supposed to take out the cauliflower and 1 cup of the liquid, blend it and mix back into the soup, then add cheese and serve.
However, our past experiences with soup indicate that simmering for a few hours usually makes the flavors fuller and better tasting. I don’t really know if it would matter for a soup like this, but we decided to let the soup simmer for another 1.5 hours on ‘keep warm’ before I blended in the cauliflower.
UPDATE: I made this a second time and followed the original recipe’s timing–the taste was about the same as letting it simmer for hours. I guess it’s just not that kind of soup.
Without the cauliflower, the broth tastes like a creamy chicken soup (go figure). It’s fine, although a bit bland.
If anyone is looking to get a blender, for the 10 seconds I used this Ninja something-or-other (link at top of post), it wasn’t too loud and has a sturdy feel to the base. It was pretty easy to put together and while the cup is plastic, it’s thick.
By the way, the cauliflower was pretty much disintegrating when I fished it out, so I guess it would’ve been better to take it out right away. Lesson learned.
UPDATE: The second time I cooked this, I took the cauliflower out immediately and it was disintegrating at that point too. That’s just pressure cooked cauliflower, apparently.
Blend the cauliflower and 1 cup liquid. I used ‘pulse’ a few times and then poured it back into the pot. The soup was actually much sweeter tasting after adding it. But, still a little lacking in complexity of flavor. So, I added some red pepper flakes and chili powder, as well as a little more salt and pepper.
I then let it simmer for another hour and a half.
Serve
I prepped some green onions for serving mainly because scallions are “too onion-tasting” and my partner HATES onions. Thus, he will get a few of the little green bits from the green onion stalks, and I get everything else because I LOVE onions.
The soup recipe calls for 3/4 cup of cheese, but we went with 1/4 cup each instead since we weren’t eating the whole batch. You could probably get away with half as much cheese, but we like cheese.
UPDATE: The second time around, I added some chopped cilantro into the pot just before serving up, and then sprinkled some on top of each bowl. I think it elevates the flavor of the dish, along with the zing from the peppers.
Note: this recipe makes a HUGE amount of soup. We had 2 bowls and there was enough for 2 more bowls left, which was unexpected, so we only ate 1/4 the servings.
Verdict: Pretty Good!
While I find it difficult to explain the flavor of the soup (my partner calls it “Classic Midwestern”), it was pretty creamy and pleasantly chicken-y tasting. The second time around I added 2 more ounces of ground turkey and the ratio of meat to soup was much better. I think adding 1/2 a serrano pepper and cilantro helped give it a bit of zing that was missing.
The cheese and green onions added at the end helped also with the texture and flavor. Also, the leftovers might’ve been even better than the original.
Check out the source: turkey cheeseburger soup recipe by Gina Homolka of SkinnyTaste.
Also feel free to check out my other cooking recipe review/try out of chicken curry (marsala).
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