Potato "Cheese" Soup

You heard right. I said complete protein. Only 1 tablespoon on nutritional yeast has 8 grams of protein and all of the essential amino acids! In addition, it is an excellent source of B vitamins, which is good news for vegetarians who often have trouble getting enough in their diets.

Nutritional yeast is fungus (think teeny, tiny mushrooms) that grows on sugarcane and beet molasses. It is fed with B vitamins until it is harvested and deactivated. Because it is deactivated it can be enjoyed by those who have a yeast allergy.

Makes: 2 main course or 4 appetizer

Preparation time: 5m
Cooking time: 5m
Total time: 1h5m

Ingredients:

  • 1 medium russet potato (chopped into 2" pieces)
  • 1/2 cup nutritional yeast (45g)
  • 2 medium roasted red peppers (120g)
  • 1/2 teaspoon onion powder
  • 1 cup broccoli (optional)
  • 1 cup spinach (optional)
  • 1/2 teaspoon coarse salt (e.g. kosher salt)

Equipment: Vitamix or regular blender

Instructions:

  1. Put the chopped potatoes and 4 cups of water into a large sauce pan.
  2. Turn the heat on to high and bring to a boil (about 15 mins). Once boiling, turn the heat down to low, cover, and simmer for 45 minutes more. The potatoes are done when they completely fall apart.
  3. Pour the potatoes and water into a blender. Add the nutritional yeast, roasted red peppers, onion powder and salt to the blender; puree until smooth.
  4. Taste to see if you want to add more salt, you can do that now. You can also add some pepper at this point.
  5. If you are using the broccoli, spinach or other veggies cut them into 2” pieces and put them into the blender with the soup.
  6. Vitamix: process on setting 4 for 30 seconds to chop of veggies. Regular blender: pulse until veggies are chopped up or process on low. You can also just chop the veggies up with a knife and add to the finished soup.
  7. Put the soup back into the saucepan and heat up to desired temp then enjoy!