Cabbage Soup Diet - The Plan & The Recipe

Serves: 1-2

Prep time: 10 Mins

Cook time: 10 Mins Sauté, 10 Mins Under High Pressure

Difficulty: Easy

On returning from Tasmania, along with fond memories, some vintage records, and a number of new pressure cooker recipes to try out, I returned with a few extra pounds that were not welcome

Mum had earlier recommended the Military Diet to shed some weight, and in the last few weeks I have seen a variant popular with pressure-heads - the Cabbage Soup Diet. Keen to shed a bit of the Winter padding, I am going to embark on this diet, and share my experience with you.

Basically, this diet has a 7-day eating plan. You should undertake the diet for a week, and then eat normally (but healthily) for at least a couple of weeks before doing it again. This diet is designed to reset your metabolism, and attenuate your craving for carbs.

Click to download a PDF Version of this guide for your reference

In this eating plan, your base meal is cabbage soup. It is your go-to if you feel hungry, and if you are over the other items you are allowed to eat on a particular day. Basically, you are permitted (In fact, encouraged) to eat cabbage soup until it is coming out of your ears. Each of the 7 days there is a restricted range of allowable foods, ranging from fruits, to vegetables, to lean meats, but excluding grains and starchy foods with high GI carbs (except a day on which you can eat a baked potato, and a day where you can feast on bananas).

I have prepared a tasty pressure cooker cabbage soup to ensure I have a flavoursome and hearty go-to meal, and am now embarking on my soup diet. I will blog the daily results, and will let you know how I go. If you want to give the diet a go, please do download the PDF diet guide I have linked above!

Tip: to help things along, so to speak, you are encouraged to drink at least 8 glasses of unadulterated water each day, and are permitted to drink black coffee and green tea should these help you stay on the straight and narrow!

Pressure Cooker Cabbage Soup Ingredients

¼ large head of cabbage, shredded, core chopped and included
4 medium-large carrots, peeled & chopped into ⅓ inch“coins”
4 large celery stalks cleaned & chopped into ⅓ inch chunks
3 medium-large onions, diced
4-5 brussels sprouts, stalk chopped and sprout quartered
1 medium leek, cleaned and chopped into ¼ inch pieces
1 400g (16 oz) tin of peeled or diced tomatoes (undrained)
2.5 tbsp minced garlic
2-3 generous pinches of seasoned/vegetable salt
A few grinds of freshly ground black pepper
A generous shaking of creole spices
1 tbsp Italian herbs
1-2 generous shakes of Old Bay (or “Season All”)
Chicken stock for 2-3 litres/quarts liquid (to taste) - we used a Knorr gel stock
1 tbsp olive oil to Sauté vegetables
Approx 1.5 litres (very approximately 1.5 Quarts) water; to fill liquid to “maximum fill” line)
Optional
A dash of hot sauce to spice things up - we love Tuong Ot Sriracha; be careful, this one packs a punch
Equipment
Pressure cooker

See our guide to pressure cooker pantry essentials to find out more about these ingredients, our recommendations, and where to buy them.

Directions

To make the soup:

Wash, peel (as required) and chop vegetables
Put your cooker onto sauté or browning mode (“Sauté” button on Instant Pot, “Manual > Browning” on Cook4me)
Add 1 tbsp oil into cooker
Add chopped onion and leek, season with salt and season all
Sauté onion and leek until the onion turns translucent
Add garlic, other vegetables and chopped cabbage stalk, but not the shredded cabbage leaves or tomato
Add other seasonings and hot sauce (except stock)
Sauté for 3-5 minutes
Add shredded cabbage leaves and tomatoes; fold through to ensure ingredients distributed evenly
Add stock and water to fill liquid to your cooker’s “maximum fill” line
Close and seal the pressure cooker lid
Select the pressure cooking mode on high pressure (“Manual” on Instant Pot, “Manual > Quick cook” on the Cook4Me) - set the cooking cycle to run for 10 minutes.
Once the pressure cooker has finished, “Quick release” the steam if your cooker does not do this automatically.
Return the cooker to “keep warm” mode (if your cooker does not do this automatically), to keep it warm until serving
Open the pressure cooker, taste, season with additional salt, hot sauce and/or cracked pepper to taste
Eat to your hearts content with other foods on the eating plan