Vegetable Dumpling Soup

Why We Love This Recipe

• Easy enough for a weeknight meal: This vegetable dumpling soup takes about an hour to make, but it's mostly hands off. It's packed with nutritious ingredients you most likely already have in your kitchen. Doesn't get much easier for a healthy, hearty dinner!
• Packed with vegetables: Celery, carrot, onion, spinach, and peas come together to make this vegetable dumpling soup.
• Warm and comforting: This soup is absolutely perfect for a winter weeknight dinner. It's warm, cozy, and oh so delicious.
• Nostalgic: Dumpling soup was one of my grandma's favorite recipes to make. For us, this recipe is packed with nostalgia, which makes it extra delicious.

Ingredients

Here's what you'll need to make this vegetable dumpling soup:

Ingredient Notes

• Vegetable broth: Use a low sodium vegetable broth so that you can better control the salt content in the soup. If you'd like, you can also try this recipe to make homemade vegetable broth from leftover veggie scraps! If you're not vegan/vegetarian, feel free to sub with chicken broth.
• Spinach: feel free to sub with another leafy green like kale or swiss chard.
• Italian seasoning blends typically contain oregano, thyme, basil, rosemary and sage. If you don't have a blend, simply add a mix of these dried herbs to the soup.
• Lemon juice: Freshly squeezed, always. All good soups need a hint of acidity to balance out all of the flavors.
• Peas: Feel free to use fresh or frozen. Fresh can be difficult to find, so we almost always use frozen.

Instructions

(1) Melt butter in a large pot over medium heat. Once melted, add the onion, celery, carrots, salt, Italian seasoning and pepper. Stir well and sauté for 6-7 minutes, until the vegetables start to soften.

(2) Add in vegetable broth and lemon juice. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to low, cover, and simmer for 15 minutes. 

(3) While the soup is simmering, make the dumplings. In a medium bowl, stir together flour, baking powder and salt. Add the butter to the flour mixture, using your hands to cut the butter into the flour until no big lumps remain. (Don't overwork the dough – the butter doesn't have to be completely incorporated.)

Add in the warm water and continue mixing the dumpling mixture by hand until it comes together. 

(4) Stir the spinach, peas and parsley into the soup.

(5) Form dumplings into small rounds (about 2 teaspoon of dough per dumpling), then drop into the soup. Bring soup to a boil again, then reduce to medium low and cover. 

Cook the dumplings for 18-20 minutes until they are still soft on the outside and chewy on the inside. Stir the soup every 5 minutes or so while the dumplings are cooking to make sure they cook evenly. Serve hot. 

Tips and FAQs

• Hands on: It's much easier to use your hands to make the dough for the dumplings. This makes it much easier to break up any big pieces of butter and create a smooth dough. It's also best to use your hands for adding the dumplings to the soup. The dough is pretty sticky, so it will stick to any utensils.
• Serving suggestions: We recommend serving this hearty vegetable dumpling soup with warm bread (try our homemade cornbread or garlic bread!) and a light side salad (like our Italian chopped salad or our Apple Pecan Salad).
• Add a protein: If you're vegan, try adding in the poultry-seasoned tofu from this recipe. If you're not vegan, this would work well with leftover shredded rotisserie chicken or Italian sausage.
• Add more vegetables: Feel free to add in other vegetables of choice, like green beans, broccoli, corn, cauliflower, etc.
• Storage: Let soup cool to room temperature, then transfer to an airtight container and refrigerate for 5 days. Reheat in a small saucepan over medium heat.
• Freezer storage: Let the soup cool completely, then transfer to a freezer safe container and freeze for up to 6 months. To reheat, let the soup thaw in the refrigerator overnight before gently reheating on the stove. We don't suggest microwaving/trying to cook the soup straight from the freezer, as the heat will cause the dumplings to disintegrate.

More Soup Recipes to Enjoy

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