Celeriac and Celery Soup – Easy Slimming World Recipe

If you usually walk straight past celeriac in the supermarket because you’re not entirely sure what you’re supposed to do with the knobbly-looking thing, soup is a really easy place to start.

This celeriac and celery soup combines celeriac with celery, leek and vegetable stock, with a couple of bay leaves for extra flavour. Once everything is soft, you simply remove the bay leaves and blend it into a smooth soup.

I actually hate raw celery, but I’m quite happy eating it when it’s cooked into recipes like this. The flavour changes considerably once it’s cooked, so if you’re another person who doesn’t particularly enjoy munching on celery sticks, don’t necessarily write off celery or celeriac soup!

The recipe makes four portions and takes around 30 minutes from start to finish.

Ingredients for celeriac and celery soup

You’ll need:

• 1 large leek, sliced
• 4 celery sticks, chopped, saving a few leaves for garnish
• 400g celeriac, peeled and diced
• 2 bay leaves
• 1200ml vegetable stock
• Low-calorie cooking spray

It’s a really simple list of ingredients, which also makes this a useful recipe when you’ve bought celeriac for something else and have some left to use.

What is celeriac?

Celeriac is sometimes called celery root, although it’s actually a variety of celery grown specifically for its large root rather than its stalks.

I’ll admit it isn’t the most attractive vegetable you’ll ever put in your shopping trolley. It’s knobbly, lumpy and generally looks as though it could do with a good scrub!

Once you get past that, though, it has a mild earthy, celery-like flavour that works particularly well in soups and stews. When cooked and blended, it also helps give this soup its lovely smooth consistency without needing to add cream.

How to prepare celeriac for soup

Start by trimming away the roots and the rough outside of the celeriac.

Because the surface is so uneven, I find it easier to use a knife rather than trying to tackle the whole thing with an ordinary vegetable peeler. Cut away the outside until you’re left with the paler flesh underneath, then cut that into manageable pieces and dice it for the soup.

You need 400g of prepared celeriac for this recipe.

Don’t worry about making every cube precisely the same size. You’re blending the soup eventually anyway. Keeping them reasonably similar simply helps them cook at roughly the same rate.

How to make celeriac and celery soup

Spray a large lidded saucepan with low-calorie cooking spray and heat it.

Add the sliced leek, chopped celery and diced celeriac, then cook them for 3–4 minutes until they’re beginning to soften.

Add the two bay leaves and 1200ml vegetable stock and bring everything to the boil.

Cover the saucepan with a lid and simmer for around 20 minutes, or until the vegetables are soft.

Remove the bay leaves before blending the soup with a hand blender until it’s smooth.

Reheat it if necessary, then serve with a few celery leaves on top.

Is this a Slimming World celeriac soup?

If you’ve found this recipe after searching for a Slimming World celeriac soup or Slimming World celery soup, the basic recipe is deliberately very simple: vegetables, vegetable stock, bay leaves and low-calorie cooking spray.

Slimming World plans and the way foods are counted can change, though, so I don’t give recipes a fixed Syn value and assume it will remain correct forever.

Check the particular vegetable stock and cooking spray you’re using against the current Slimming World information if you’re following the plan.

I’ve got plenty more Slimming World soup recipes if you’re looking for other ideas too.

Can I make celeriac soup in a soup maker?

This is a particularly easy recipe to adapt for a soup maker because there are no complicated stages or dairy ingredients to worry about.

Prepare the leek, celery and celeriac and add them to your soup maker with the bay leaves.

You’ll need to adjust the amount of stock to stay within the minimum and maximum liquid levels specified for your particular machine rather than automatically pouring in the full 1200ml used for the hob recipe.

Select the appropriate smooth soup programme for your machine.

Most importantly, remember to remove the bay leaves before blending if your machine doesn’t handle the blending automatically at the end in a way that lets you remove them first.

Because soup makers vary in capacity and programmes, follow the instructions supplied with your machine rather than assuming every model works identically.

For more ideas, have a look at my soup maker recipes.

Can I make this with just celery?

If you can’t get celeriac, you could make a celery-based soup, but I wouldn’t simply remove 400g of celeriac and expect exactly the same result.

The celeriac contributes both flavour and body to this recipe.

If you want to experiment, potato would be a more suitable replacement because it will help maintain the thicker texture of the blended soup.

You can also replace the leek with onion or additional celery if that’s what you have available.

What does celeriac soup taste like?

Celeriac has an earthy flavour with a definite hint of celery, but it’s much milder than biting into a raw celery stick.

Combining it with leek and celery makes the flavour more noticeable without being overpowering.

There’s no cream or cheese in this recipe, so the finished soup tastes primarily of the vegetables rather than having the flavour hidden underneath lots of dairy.

Is celeriac good for weight loss?

No single vegetable is going to make you lose weight, and I’d be wary of anything suggesting otherwise.

Celeriac can certainly be part of a balanced diet, just like celery, carrots, broccoli and all the other vegetables I regularly use in recipes. What matters for weight loss is your diet overall rather than whether you’ve managed to squeeze a particular supposedly magical vegetable into your lunch.

This soup is predominantly vegetables and stock and doesn’t contain cream or cheese. If you’re choosing meals based on calories or another nutritional target, use the nutritional information for the particular ingredients you’ve used rather than relying on labels such as “diet soup”.

For more ideas, you might like my healthy soup recipes collection.

What can I serve with celery and celeriac soup?

It depends whether you’re having it as a starter or making it your lunch.

For lunch, I’d probably add some bread, toast or a sandwich because I personally wouldn’t find a bowl of blended vegetable soup particularly filling on its own.

If you’re serving smaller portions as a starter, it doesn’t really need anything alongside it.

You could also add a little black pepper or some chopped celery leaves on top just before serving.

Can I make this soup ahead?

Yes. It’s a straightforward soup to make in advance because it doesn’t contain pasta or dairy that might change the texture while it’s sitting in the fridge.

Once you’ve made it, cool the soup and transfer it to covered containers before refrigerating it promptly.

When you’re ready to eat it, reheat it thoroughly until steaming hot throughout.

Can I freeze celeriac and celery soup?

Yes, this is also a useful soup for batch cooking and freezing.

I’d divide it into individual portions before freezing rather than putting one enormous container in the freezer. Apart from being easier to defrost, it means you can take out exactly as much as you need.

You may find the soup has thickened slightly after storing or freezing. If it has, add a little water or stock while reheating until you’re happy with the consistency.

More warming soup recipes

If cold weather has put you firmly into soup mode, my healthy winter soup recipes has plenty more ideas using vegetables, lentils, pasta and other filling ingredients.

You can also browse all my healthy soup recipes, or head straight to my Slimming World soup recipes if that’s what you’re particularly looking for.

And if you’ve got a soup maker sitting on the worktop, my soup maker recipes should give you a few more excuses to use it.

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