This recipe came about because I found out I had high cholesterol – and needed ‘oat bran’ in my diet. Oat bran washes the cholesterol your liver produces out of your system.
I’m always looking for ways to add it to my diet WITHOUT RUINING THE FOOD.
I love spinach – and a friend gave me a plant, so SPINACH SOUP it was.
This soup is really creamy and hearty, and YUMMY – great with crusty bread.
Ingredients
1 cup of onion, chopped (red onion lightens the onion flavour a little)
1/4 cup spring onions, chopped
1/4 cup apple juice (I juice my own – leave the skin on, if it is organic – just cut out the core and pips)
2 tsp olive oil
2 cups fresh spinach, chopped
1/4 cup fresh parsley, chopped (you can use dried if you have to – about 1/8 of a cup)
1/4 cup celery, chopped
4 cup vegetable stock
1/3 cup oat bran
1 teaspoon of sea salt
1 tablespoon thyme (again dried is okay – 1/2 of a teaspoon)
a good pinch or two of black pepper
Take a large saucepan and using a reasonably high heat, sauté onions and spring onions in the apple juice and oil for five minutes.
Stir frequently while doing this.
Next, you add the spinach, parsley and celery.
Cook for five minutes, stir now and then.
Chuck in the vege broth, oat bran, salt, thyme and pepper.
Bring this to the boil.
Lower heat to medium.
Cover the soup mixture and let it simmer for approximately 20 minutes.
Take of the heat.
Cool for approximately 10 minutes.
Puree in a blender. I like soup to have a bit of chunkiness – so I don’t make it too smooth. Taste as you go along until it is at a consistency YOU like.
Return to the pot to reheat and serve.
Then – eat, eat, eat and ENJOY.
Tip
This soup is also great with homemade melba toast (stick some stale bread in the oven on a low heat for an hour or so), with the Tuna, Cannellini Bean, Avocado and Red Onion Salad on top.
Chronicles of Illusions 
The ingredients in the list are very unusual. Apple sauce? I may have to try this recipe just to satisfy my curiosity.
LikeLike
It is really creamy and has lots of flavour. About the best spinach soup I have ever tasted.
LikeLike
Hey, Jo, I keep forgetting to let you know thatI DID try it, all except the oat bran which I can’t figure out exactly how to translate over here…LOL. Wheat germ I can do (NO, I did NOT add that to your soup…heh, heh, heh). Care to give me a substitute for the bran?
At any rate, this is the best spinach soup I’ve ever tasted cause it’s the first one! Thanks for sharing, now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go buy a can of tuna….:-D
LikeLike
you can use porridge/oats instead
Okay this is what I found – hope it makes sense
Son d’avoine = oat bran
LikeLike
Apple “sauce”, MM? I had to go back up and read the post again…LOL. Then I got to thinking, ah, why not? Must be another case of “You say toe MAH toe n I say toe MAY toe”.
But i too wondered about THAT ingredient, however one refers to it ;-D
LikeLike
APPLE JUICE
LikeLike
oops, well its like this.. Jo mentions juicing her own. So in some wierd way its translated to me as sauce because when I juice my own stuff, I never throw out the pulp but use it also in whatever recipe the ingredient was called for. I never like throwing pulp away as it seems a waste. Hence, juice to sauce. 🙂
LikeLike
I think that throwing it all in would just make it yummier actually – I kept the pulp – it is good for muffins – and froze it.
LikeLike
I can’t live without my spinach, I’m like Popeye the Sailor. So there’s always a section of my garden allocated to our spinach. We eat it every week in all sorts of ways, but have never tried to make it into a soup. This recipe sounds interesting, I’ll definitely give it a go.
LikeLike
I like my spinach too – love it in just about anything – it is great instead of lettuce in salad in summer, and with omeletes in winter for lunch.
LikeLike