My "Belly Rest" Chicken And Sweet Potato Soup

We all have one of those "go-to" meals when our Crohn's is flaring, and today, I thought I would share mine. I make this soup at least once a week and have it if I know I've overdone things or want to focus on liquid nutrition.

I call it my "belly rest" soup, as I really think it helps calm things down. And because everything is blended and blitzed, I'm perfectly okay with the vegetables in this one, too. Of course, just because something is safe for me doesn't mean it is for everyone, so make adaptions if needed.

Makes 4 servings

Chicken and sweet potato soup ingredients

• 2 cooked chicken breasts. I often use leftovers for this soup but, if you're vegan, you can just omit this and it tastes just as good!
• 2 sweet potatoes
• 2 carrots
• 2 medium potatoes
• 750 ml of bone broth
• 1/2 cup of any non-dairy milk
• 2 teaspoons of turmeric
• Sprinkle of black pepper
• 1 small piece of ginger

Adapting the ingredients to fit your IBD needs

If you can't find bone broth, chicken or veggie stock can work just as well (although bone broth tends to have a higher concentration of chicken bones and less salt and sugar added). I know some people with Crohn's or UC may follow the low-FODMAP diet so if that's you, it's ok to have half a cup of sweet potato on this diet; so it could be worth limiting the sweet potato and adding in other safe veggies or more potato. If you are on the low residue diet, again you might want to cut back on the vegetables and up the potato. Although, root vegetables (like carrot and sweet potato) are often very soft when cooked and blended, so you might find like me that you can tolerate the whole thing. I personally make this with dairy-free milk but if you are fine with the regular kind, feel free to use that instead!

How to make the "belly rest" chicken and sweet potato soup

Prepping time

1. Peel and slice carrots, sweet potatoes and potatoes; cut into small chunks.
2. Ensure cooked chicken is chopped finely.
3. Peel ginger and dice it finely.

Making it the old fashioned way

1. Add bone broth and 1/2 of the almond milk to a saucepan to make your soup base.
2. If using cooked chicken, now's the time to add it to the pan.
3. Stir in all of the peeled and chopped vegetables, ginger and turmeric.
4. Bring the whole thing to the boil and then cook on simmer for 35-40 minutes.
5. By this time the vegetables should have softened considerably.
6. Blend to smooth using a blender, hand blender or even a Nutri bullet. If you don't have any of those, the soup will just be a little chunkier.
7. Finally, add the other half of the dairy-free milk to the mixture and stir through to make it extra creamy.

Using a soup maker to make this recipe

It's much easier to make this with a soup maker so it could be worth investing in one! Simply add everything (except 1/2 the dairy-free milk – put that aside to the end) to the soup maker and let it do its magic! Once cooked, simply stir through the remainder of the dairy-free milk.

I hope you love this recipe as much as I do!