DELICIOUS low carbohydrate vichyssoise

[estación seca]

A truly delicious and favorite cold summer soup is vichyssoise, which is a US invention (though it sounds French.) It is a cream soup of leeks and potatoes. Vichyssoise is made by sauteeing without browning some sliced up leeks and onions in butter; adding broth, salt & pepper, a little nutmeg, and cubed peeled potatoes; cooking until the potatoes are done; blending or pureeing to smooth; reheating to boiling; then adding cream, and heating almost to boiling. At this point you can chill it or not, and serve topped with chopped chives. I'm not going to give a full recipe because so many can be found online.

A lot of cream soups include potato as a thickening agent, but of course this is mostly starch - sugar strung together in alpha glucoside linkages. Plenty of people are avoiding carbohydrates to lose weight, and get into better health. I wondered how rutabaga would do as a potato substitute for vichyssoise.

Rutabagas are in the Brassicaceae (cabbage) family. They are giant cousins of turnips. They have thick underground tuber-like stems resembling a root vegetable. Think of kohlrabi with the thick stem underground. They have nowhere near the carbohydrate content of a potato or carrot.

Well, I tried it, and I can tell you rutabaga makes a great substitute for potato in vichyssoise. It has a tiny bit of bitter to it, common to Brassicaceae food plants, but the resultant soup is delicious. I've made it for a number of other people, and they couldn't even tell it wasn't made with potato.