Soy Recipe Substitute

For us, living with a soy allergy has not been that bad. My son's symptoms are severe enough to be messy, but not alarming (I know that is not always the case). Mostly, we just can't eat many convenience foods. That's alright too since we probably eat a little healthier because of it. For the longest time however, I'd get a bit whiny when I'd think of all the recipes that called for cream of whatever soup that we could not have. I fancy myself a bit of a gourmand (no, I did not mean gourmet), and I missed quick chicken enchilada casserole and my grams' tortilla casserole and wow did I miss green bean casserole. Why, do you ask? All soy allergy family cooks know that the cream soups down the aisle all have soy flour. Drat!

Well, no more cooking lamentations. This Cream of Anything Soup recipe from cdkitchen makes the yummiest cream soups ever. You will never miss the canned version. You might even find your kids eating it all before you can use it for a recipe. The only drawback is that the recipe is for the soup, not the condensed version. To compensate for this, I leave the chicken broth out of the recipe and add the equivalent in bouillon cubes (we tolerate msg, and there is one brand down our aisle that does not have soy protein). Don't boil the soup, just let it thicken, then refrigerate or freeze it until you need it. If you do decide to use it as a soup later, just add the 2 cups water to complete the recipe!

Three things of note

• There is no listing of celery cream soup, but that hasn't stopped me. For the 4 serving version of the recipe: I add about a stalk and a half of celery finely chopped and the onion to the butter, and cook that until the vegetables gets a little tender. Then I add the flour for the roux and continue as the recipe says.
• If you can't tolerate the msg, you might use homemade stock instead for the soup (this is dastardly good stuff!) or for the condensed version, use the homemade stock, leave out the milk, but add the dried milk powder necessary for 1 1/2 c. milk. Several recipes I read up on used this substitute.
• Tomato Bisque and Golden Mushroom Soup by a famous maker don't have soy protein listed in the ingredients. We take advantage of that.