Paleo Soup Recipes

Many gazpacho recipes are thickened with bread, but this one uses just vegetables, making it a gluten-free refresher for a hot summer day. The key to any flavorful gazpacho is giving it time to rest. The flavors meld and become cohesive when the soup is allowed to sit a bit before serving.

Blitzed cauliflower gives this very easy vegan soup recipe its creamy taste without adding any dairy. To get the silkiest texture, puree the soup in a blender rather than using an immersion blender.

You'll need a pie pumpkin, not the carving kind, for this healthy soup recipe. Roasting brings out a sweet, almost smoky flavor and creates a soup with depth and character. Store-bought pepitas are a good topper, but the homemade glazed ones here are really special. Serve with a swirl of crème fraîche, sour cream or smoked olive oil, if desired.

Bake up some Manchego cheese toasts and uncork a bottle of Ribera del Duero to enjoy alongside this healthy pot of soup. Both sweet and hot Italian sausage work well.

There's no cream in this silky mushroom soup. Pureed potatoes give this vegan mushroom soup its creamy texture. Be sure to use Yukon Gold--russets don't provide quite the right texture.

Gazpacho is a delicious way to eat more veggies. Think of it as a vegetable smoothie. Not only does Chef José Andrés keep a pitcher of this healthy gazpacho recipe in his refrigerator all summer, it's also served at Beefsteak, his chain of vegetable-driven restaurants.

Garlic and ginger flavor the broth of this egg drop soup.

Apples add just a hint of sweetness to this velvety pumpkin soup. Try it as a delightful first course for a special meal.

Dried kelp and bonito flakes, briefly simmered, create a delicate amber broth called “first” or “primary” dashi, the basis for most clear soups in Japan. For “second” dashi, the kelp and bonito are added to a new pot of water (like a used tea bag), making a weaker stock to be used in boldly seasoned dishes like miso soup. Although instant dashi granules and bottles of concentrated dashi are timesaving substitutes, the taste is less subtle and refined than dashi made from scratch.

Inspired by Spanish pureed gazpachos, this golden-yellow one is based on an idea of Greg Parks's at the Four Columns Inn in Newfane, Vermont.

What bouillabaisse is to Provence, cioppino is to San Francisco. The principle behind both fish stews is much the same: simmer the catch of the day in a rich broth, grab a soup spoon and enjoy. Like many classic cioppino recipes, this calls for red wine in the broth, but feel free to substitute white. The assortment of seafood can vary as well: little clams instead of mussels, scallops in place of shrimp. Serve with sourdough bread.

This rustic dish typifies Mediterranean home cooking at its best: a full-flavored vegetable stew is topped with eggs to become a main dish. Any hot sauce you have on hand will add a nice jolt of heat, but for a complex, authentic flavor, try harissa, a chile paste from North Africa.

Homemade broths are easy to whip up with leftover bones and freeze well.

Homemade chicken broth is easy to make with this slow-cooker chicken stock recipe. With just 5 minutes of prep time, you'll have 10 cups of no-sodium-added flavorful broth to use in soups, stews, pastas and more.

This easy turkey stock adds great flavor to the gravy, but you can use chicken broth instead with good results.

The delicate flavors of cucumber and watermelon go hand in hand to create a sweet-and-savory chilled soup, perfect as a first course on a hot night.

Nothing soothes, nourishes and comforts like homemade chicken broth. Canned broth is a handy standby for quick soups, but homemade delivers maximum flavor while contributing minimal calories.

Making and freezing vegetable broth is well worth the minimal effort. While there are some commercial broths we like, nothing beats the fresh, clean flavor of homemade.

It is difficult to find a commercial fish stock, although some fish markets may offer a frozen stock. Seek out heads and bones at the fish counter of your grocery store.

Veal bones make a particularly rich, gelatinous beef stock. If you don't have them, substitute an equal amount of beef bones. The step of roasting the bones, which imparts fuller flavor, may be omitted if time is short.