How to Make Lidia's Cauliflower and Tomato Soup Recipe at Home

Italian recipes are far more diverse than pizza and pasta and include a broad array of different meals. For example, Lidia’s cauliflower and tomato soup recipe is a healthy and pasta-free dish that can work well as a side dish or a primary meal. Making it at home can provide you with a delicious, traditional Italian meal that will suit your whole family. Here’s what you need to know!

Table of Contents show

Who is Lidia?

Lidia Bastianich is an Italian-American chef who was originally born in Italy before immigrating to the states as a young woman. She is one of the most renowned and respected Italian food specialists in the world, owns multiple restaurants, and has hosted multiple television shows over the years. Her traditional approach to Italian cooking has helped make this cuisine more persistent in the country.

Over the years, she has been nominated for and won multiple awards for her cooking, including the 2018 Daytime Emmy Award for “Outstanding Culinary Host.” She also won the 2019 Premio Artusi by the Scientific Committee of Casa Artusi for her work as a chef. Lidia’s cauliflower and tomato soup recipe is just one of the many great dishes she offers the world.

Lidia’s Cauliflower and Tomato Soup Recipe Nutrients

This delicious meal is also a very healthy one, which is a common theme with Lidia’s dishes. She focuses heavily on providing each meal with a diverse array of ingredients that make her recipes tasty without being overwhelmingly saturated with fat or other unhealthy items. In a very similar recipe to hers, the following nutrients were noted by the recipe writers:

99 calories
Three grams of fat
Two grams of saturated fat
Eight milligrams of cholesterol
16 grams of carbohydrates
Eight grams of sugar
Three grams of fiber
Three grams of protein
660 milligrams of sodium

This last nutrient might concern many people trying to keep their salt intake low. Our recipe thankfully decreases this sodium level and makes it a more palpable recipe. Note that these nutrients are for one cup of this delicious soup. A larger bowl will have a different level of nutrients. Pay attention to this fact before making this meal to ensure that you get the healthy levels you want.

Lidia’s Cauliflower and Tomato Soup Recipe Ingredients

While many of Lidia’s recipes include multiple ingredients, she is always careful to create recipes that anybody can make at home. This mirrors the traditional Italian practice of making large and expansive meals from scratch at a moment’s notice. Thankfully, you should be able to find many of the items needed for this dish either in your home or at a local shopping center:

One-quarter cup of extra virgin olive oil
One medium white onion
One large carrot
Four celery stalks
Two fresh bay leaves
One-quarter cup tomato paste (not sauce)
One tablespoon of chopped thyme
Four teaspoons of kosher salt (sea salt also works)
One large cauliflower head
One and one-half cups of rice
One-half cup of fresh Italian parsley
Grated Grana Padana to taste

All of the vegetables in this recipe (including the carrot, onion, celery stalks, and cauliflower) must be cleaned and chopped before cooking. The cauliflower must be cut into one-inch cubes that easily fit into your bowl. You may also chop them into smaller cubes if you prefer smaller bits of cauliflower. Note that you should only use the freshest ingredients when preparing this dish.

We strongly suggest going to a farmer’s market to find the best and freshest items for your meals. These shopping destinations let you not only get fresh food but help you pick organic items and help the farmers directly. You can often find incredible deals at farmer’s markets, as well, as you cut out the middle dealer and buy directly from the grower.

How to Make Lidia’s Cauliflower and Tomato Soup Recipe

Lidia likes to produce recipes that take a little time to prepare but which sit well on the palate. The same is true of Lidia’s cauliflower and tomato soup recipe. It isn’t exactly difficult to make but does take several steps. Expect it to take over an hour to prepare this meal. However, you can adjust your cooking ingredients to produce larger amounts that you can save for later. Follow these steps:

Heat the olive oil in a large Dutch oven until it is hot
Add the chopped onion, celery, and carrot and stir until soften
Pour in the tomato paste on a specific spot on the pan until it is toasted
Add five quarts of cold water with the bay leaves, thyme, and salt
Boil this mixture and simmer, uncovered, for about 30 minutes
Add the cauliflower, cover, and cook for another 30 minutes
Pour in the rice and uncover, simmering until the soup is thickened (about 15 minutes)
Remove the bay leaves using a strainer spoon and add the parsley to the top
Drizzle a little olive oil on the top and add the cheese to taste
Serve in medium-sized bowls immediately and store the rest in air-tight containers in the fridge

This meal is best served warm, but you can keep the leftovers for several days before they go bad. You can usually keep them for as long as a week or more before they may need to be thrown away. Smell the soup when you open it from the fridge. If you notice a sharp or pungent smell, it is probably best to throw it away to ensure that you don’t get sick from it.

Thankfully, this soup is mostly vegetables, so it should take some time before it goes bad. It can last even longer if you freeze it, typically up to six months or so. Note that the freezing process is likely to rob it of some of its nutrients. Take it out of the freezer and throw it away once you notice freezer burn developing throughout the soup or the containers holding it.

Ways to Improve Lidia’s Cauliflower and Tomato Soup Recipe

If you’re interested in making this recipe, we have a few tips that can make it even tastier and even improve its nutritional value a little:

Mix in Some Broccoli: Broccoli and cauliflower mix perfectly and complement each other’s taste, while the broccoli also adds a bit of protein!
Add Indian Spices: Spices like coriander seeds, mustard seeds, tumeric, cumin, and red pepper flakes can improve this recipe and give it a bit of spice.
Bacon, Bacon, Bacon: Add a little chopped bacon to this meal to give it a richer and sweeter taste, though beware of the extra fat it adds.

More awesome recipes: