We made one of our favorite soups allergy friendly! Our dairy free Broccoli Cheese Soup is also gluten free and soy free and has an easy vegan option. This soup tastes amazing with chopped bacon added to it as well!
When you eat dairy free, there are just some foods that you really miss and that aren’t available much of anywhere and sometimes hard to make on your own. Broccoli cheese soup is one of those foods for us!
I’ve been dairy free for years, but just now have gotten around to making a great dairy free version of broccoli cheddar soup! I was trying to come up with dinner one night and my daughter suggested it.
It was pretty quick to make (about 30 minutes), used basic ingredients we already had in the house, and everyone loved it.
Our version of broccoli cheese soup is dairy free and gluten free, but still thick and creamy, and is amazing on a cold night with some warm allergy friendly bread (Kim and Jake’s bread would be perfect!).
Our dairy free broccoli cheddar soup is:
- Dairy free
- Gluten free
- Vegan option
- Soy free (depending on the type of dairy free cheese you use)
- Peanut free
- Tree nut free (unless you count coconut as a tree nut, we don’t)
How to make dairy free broccoli cheese soup
While this soup has several steps, it comes together in about 30 minutes and isn’t very hard to make.
Here are the steps for making this recipe (the recipe card is at the end of the post):
- First, prepare the broccoli (we roast the broccoli for this soup for extra flavor!).
- Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F and spray or brush some oil on a cookie sheet or baking pan.
- Wash the broccoli and cut into 1 inch florets. Toss the florets with the olive oil and some salt and pepper.
- Spread out onto the oiled cookie sheet and roast in the oven for 10 minutes.
- Stir the broccoli around turning them over, then return to the oven for another 10 minutes.
While the broccoli is cooking, start making the soup base:
- Add the chicken (or vegetable) broth to a large soup pot and cook over medium heat.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the canned coconut milk, corn starch, yeast flakes, and seasonings.
- Add the coconut milk mixture to the broth and whisk in. Lower the heat slightly to medium-low and simmer, stirring regularly to promote even thickening and to prevent scorching on the bottom.
- Add the dairy free shredded cheddar cheese to the soup and whisk in. It will take a few minutes for it to melt completely and distribute into the soup. At first it will just stick to the whisk, just keep whisking and stirring until it stops sticking to the whisk and it’s melted into the soup.
- Once the broccoli is done cooking, allow it to cool a bit until you can handle it, then chop the broccoli and add to the soup.
- Simmer the soup (still stirring regularly) until it reaches the thickness you like (it will likely already be thick enough by the time you add the broccoli). This soup will also thicken as it cools.
Serve this broccoli cheddar soup hot with a sprinkle of dairy free cheese on top and allergy friendly bread (toasted rolls are great with this!).
The first time we tested this recipe, we added some chopped bacon to our broccoli soup and it was incredible! If you’re not vegan, I highly recommend adding some chopped nitrate-free bacon to this soup for a extra flavor and protein. It’s amazing!!
Tips for making our dairy free broccoli cheddar soup
Another reason we recommend stirring this regularly is that, like many foods that are thickened with cornstarch, it will form a kind of skin on top of the soup that you’ll want to keep whisked in before it gets too thick.
This is totally normal, and very common for foods thickened with cornstarch (like homemade pudding). If you don’t stir this in regularly it can create lumps when you do finally stir it in after a while.
Even as it’s cooling, it’s a good idea to give it a stir regularly to help with this.
We tried this recipe with both Daiya dairy free cheddar and the Follow Your Heart shreds and they both worked great! For this recipe, use whatever dairy free cheddar cheese you prefer. The cheddar (along with the nutritional yeast) gives this dairy free broccoli cheese soup that nice golden color.
If you’ve been around our blog a bit, you might notice that we use cajun or Creole seasoning in pretty much everything as an all-purpose seasoning. We use Tony Chachere’s, but this brand has a wheat cross contamination warning, so if you have celiac disease, pick a brand that is made in a dedicated gluten free facility such as A Cajun Life brand.
Serve our allergy friendly broccoli cheddar soup with some of our cracker or bread recipes:
- Gluten Free Drop Biscuits
- Gluten Free Garlic Herb Crackers
- Gluten Free Cornbread
- Gluten Free Sandwich Bread
Dairy Free Broccoli Cheese Soup (Gluten Free)
Ingredients
- 4-5 cups fresh broccoli florets
- 1 Tablespoon olive oil
- Salt and black pepper
- 4 cups unsalted chicken broth (or use vegetable broth for vegan)
- 1 ½ cups canned coconut milk (or Silk heavy cream or Silk half and half)
- 3-4 Tablespoons corn starch
- ¼ cup nutritional yeast flakes
- 1 teaspoon cajun spice (we use this as an all-purpose spice on everything)
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon onion powder
- ½ teaspoon salt (omit if using salted broth)
- ¼ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 cup dairy free shredded cheddar style cheese (we have used both Daiya and Follow Your Heart, both work good)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350 degrees F. Spray a cookie sheet with some spray oil and set aside.
- Wash broccoli and cut into about 1 inch florets. Toss with the olive oil and some salt and pepper.
- Spread out onto the oiled cookie sheet and roast in the oven for 10 minutes.
- Stir the broccoli, then return to the oven for another 10 minutes.
- While the broccoli is cooking, add the broth to a large soup pot and cook over medium heat.
- In a medium bowl, whisk together the canned coconut milk, corn starch, yeast flakes, and seasonings.
- Add the coconut milk mixture to the broth and whisk in. Lower the heat slightly to medium-low and simmer, stirring this regularly to promote even thickening and to prevent scorching on the bottom.
- Add the dairy free shredded cheddar cheese to the soup and whisk in. It will take a few minutes for it to melt completely and distribute into the soup. Keep whisking and stirring until it stops sticking to the whisk.
- Once the broccoli is done cooking, allow to cool for about 5 minutes then chop the broccoli on a cutting board and add to the soup pot.
- Simmer the soup (still stirring regularly) until it reaches the thickness you like. This soup will thicken as it cools.
- Serve hot with a sprinkle of dairy free shredded cheese on top and allergy friendly bread.
- We added chopped bacon to our broccoli cheese soup one of the times we made this and it turns out delicious!
Nutrition
Sarah Jane Parker is the founder, recipe creator, and photographer behind The Fit Cookie. She’s a food allergy mom and healthy living blogger based in Wyoming. Sarah is also an ACSM Certified Personal Trainer, ACE Certified Health Coach, Revolution Running certified running coach, and an ACE Certified Fitness Nutrition Specialist
Loved this! Can you tell me what the serving size is and how 222kcal equates to regular calories?
Hi Erin! The serving size is about 1 cup, that’s an estimate since I haven’t yet measured out this soup recipe to see if it makes 8 cups for a full batch exactly. 222 kcal is the same as 222 calories, kilocalories are usually only used in chemistry and physics so I’m not sure why our recipe card lists it this way. Here’s a better explanation of it if you want to read more: https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/kcal-vs-calories#differences 🙂 I hope that helps!
What a wonderful soup, thank you for sharing this recipe! I was looking for a vegan and cashew free recipe of this soup, this one is exactly what I needed. Looking forward to making it again.
Thank you Jordan!
I made this today ! I will make this again 🙂
Thank you for this recipe
Thank you Rena!
how important are the yeast flakes to this recipe? is there a substitute for them you’d recommend?
Hi Jill! The yeast flakes help to add some of the cheesy flavor to this soup, so you can omit them if you want to but the soup may taste a little less “cheesy” overall, but should still taste good. I don’t really know of a good substitute for the nutritional yeast for flavor. Maybe a couple teaspoons of chickpea miso perhaps that would add umami flavor, but it wouldn’t quite be the same flavor profile. You can try it without the yeast flakes and it should be fine, they just add some additional cheesy flavors with the dairy free cheddar.
My soup was too sweet, likely from the half and half. I could really eat it because of that.
I tried to bring the sweetness down with lemon juice and olive oil. It didn’t really work.
Over all it was easy to make and I will try again but with out the half and half creamer.
Hi Ashley! Did you use a sweetened creamer in this recipe? The Silk half and half product has no added sugar or sweeteners in it, so it should not make the soup sweet at all. You might check what you used in this recipe. These are the products we recommended if you aren’t using coconut milk, neither of these have any added sugars or sweeteners in them at all and shouldn’t make anything sweet tasting:
Silk heavy cream: https://silk.com/plant-based-products/creamer/dairy-free-heavy-whipping-cream-alternative/
Silk half and half: https://silk.com/plant-based-products/creamer/dairy-free-half-and-half-alternative/
so glad i ran across this recipe. I already figured out a gf version, but not dairy free. can’t wait to try this out.
Thank you Keira! Let us know what you think 🙂