Sometimes you just want something quick and dead simple for dinner. But it also has to taste amazing, and be healthy, and not cost an arm and a leg, and your first borne to boot. This salmon soup is it. Let’s get cooking!
The premise for this soup was something quick, yet tasty. That means fucking around with making your own fish stock is a no-go. To avoid making bland “milk tea”, we’ll instead rely on various ingredients to impart delicious flavour into the milk base – because simply poaching the salmon in milk will not yield the results we’re after.
Enter white miso, MSG, and kombu. They do the heavy lifting that a proper stock would: miso brings savoury depth and gentle sweetness, MSG sharpens the backbone of the broth without adding noise, and kombu slips in a clean, maritime umami that never screams “seaweed.” Together they turn plain milk into something that actually tastes like soup rather than warmed dairy. You get real flavour in minutes, not after an afternoon of simmering fish carcasses.
This borderline decadent dinner is a pretty low carb, protein forward dish, and since salmon is naturally a pretty fatty fish, so is this dish. But it’s very rich in nutrients, has a shitload of fiber and is totally good for ya!
Macros per serving:
- 560 kcal
- 45 g protein
- 33 g fat
- 15 g carbs
If you want some carbs, simply add (dry weight) 200 g cooked farfalle and reduce fish to 600g. This would bring the macros to something like this, so slightly lower calorie, noticeably lower protein, much higher carb, and still beautifully balanced and filling:
- 535 kcal
- 38 g protein
- 27 g fat
- 30 g carbs
Ingredients
- 2 tsp real butter
- 2 shallot, finely chopped
- 2 red bell pepper, diced (add later in sauté)
- 1 garlic clove, finely chopped/minced
- 1.2 liter whole milk
- 2 tsp white miso
- 1/4 tsp MSG (optional)
- 1/6 tsp xanthan gum*
- 2–3 cm strip kombu (optional)
- Fine sea salt, to taste
- 700 g skinless salmon fillet, cut into 1.5–2 cm cubes
- 200 g (8 big handfuls) fresh spinach
*if you don’t have xanthan gum, you could use corn starch to thicken, but it won’t yield the same creaminess or aerate as well. So just get some. 100g keeps for a looong time!
You could also use skinny cottage cheese to thicken the soup – simply blend it in completely smooth. Though you need a powerful upright blender for that otherwise it’ll be “grainy”. Cottage cheese will also increase protein content quite a bit, while keeping the fat low, so it’s a very good hack in everything from soups to purées.
To serve:
- A small drizzle of good olive oil
- Finely chopped chives
- Lemon zest
Method
Take a 2-3 liter pot and sauté the red bell pepper for 4 minutes. Set aside, then add the sliced shallot in a tiny bit of butter or oil for 4 minutes over medium heat. Chop/mince the garlic and add for the final 1 minute.
Add this to your pot:
- Cold milk
- White miso
- MSG
- Xanthan
- Pinch of fine sea salt
Use a stick blender to blitz wiith a stick blender until completely smooth. Blending now ensures the xanthan hydrates evenly and the miso fully dissolves.
After blending, add the optional strip of kombu to the cold milk and heat it to a gentle simmer on medium heat. Remove kombu well before it simmers.
When it simmers, kill the heat, have a taste, and quickly:
- Adjust viscosity with more xanthan gum if necessary,
- Season to perfection with fine sea salt, and
- Add a splash of white wine, white balsamic vinegar, or lemon juice
…while running your stick blender. Use this opportunity to also aerate the soup.
Next add the spinach & peppers and stir to combine, let the spinach wilt in the residual heat, no fucking boiling, then add the salmon cubes. This takes no more than 3 minutes, so prepare for serving while you wait.
Ladle the soup into bowls, and top each with:
- A small drizzle of olive oil
- A small sprinkle of finely chopped chives
- Lemon zest – use the “coarse” Microplane if you have it
