Cold Cucumber Soup
Cold soup can be the refreshing star at your spring brunch or summer picnics! Cold Cucumber Soup is a blender soup recipe made with cucumbers, Greek yogurt and fresh herbs. Perfect for a refreshing appetizer, healthy lunch, or meatless meal, the chilled soup is Weight Watcher’s friendly, vegetarian, low carb, and gluten-free!
Ways to Serve Cold Soup
Chilled soups are really versatile. Depending on the ingredients used, you can serve cold soups as a meal on their own, or make them part of a multi-course meal. When serving cold soup with a meal, there are basically three courses that it can be served for:
- Appetizer – Serving cold soups as appetizers is a great way to get the palate excited for the light meal ahead. The Cold Cucumber Soup recipe I’m sharing today would be perfect as an appetizer, as would this Chilled Avocado Soup with Coconut Milk, from Cookin’ Canuck.
- First Course – A first course cold soup would likely be served in place of a salad. A great choice would be cold vegetable soups, like this Tomato Gazpacho Soup, from Family Food on the Table, or Cold Creamy Zucchini Soup, from Foodie with Family.
- Dessert – It may sound strange to think of having cold soup for dessert, but chilled fruit soups are perfect to serve at the end of a meal. One of my favorites is Chilled Cantaloupe Soup. It’s creamy, sweet, and light… similar to having a fruit smoothie or a scoop of sherbet for dessert. Other great choices would be Mango-Raspberry Cold Soup or Texan Erin’s Swedish Blueberry Soup.
Cold Cucumber Soup Ingredients
While baking a batch of strawberry yogurt cookies, I realized how often I add yogurt as a substitute for full fat ingredients like sour cream, butter, and oil. I have two good reasons for doing that. Their names are calories and cholesterol.
FOOD FACTS – Butter and Mayo vs. Greek Yogurt
Every tablespoon of real butter that slides across your tongue is a whopping 102 calories and 12 grams of fat, 7 of which are saturated. Wow, that’s a danged delicious but artery clogging agent! In comparison, 1 tablespoon of nonfat plain Greek yogurt has just 10 calories and zero grams of fat! Even a tablespoon of the whole milk (full fat) Stonyfield yogurt only has 17 calories and just under 1 gram of fat.
Now play the same scenario with mayonnaise, an often-used ingredient in summer side dishes like potato salad. Compare 1 tablespoon of 10-calorie yogurt to 1 tablespoon of full fat mayo, holding a whopping 94 calories and 10 grams of fat. If that’s not a great reason to substitute yogurt for mayonnaise in your summer dishes, I don’t know what is. We need to keep our bodies healthy and in swim suit shape, right?
Cold Cucumber Soup is refreshing and healthy, and it comes with a boat load of flavor from the fresh dill, tarragon, and parsley that are in it.
Because it’s a blender recipe, the soup is incredibly quick to make, taking just 5 minutes! You can eat it right away, but for the best flavor, chill it for at least a couple of hours before serving. The soup is Weight Watcher’s friendly, with only 1 Smart Point per 1/2 cup serving! It’s also low carb, gluten free, and vegetarian, making it perfect to serve as a meatless Monday meal. When you’re headed to the beach or on a picnic, take along a thermos of this delicious cucumber soup.
Hooray, we’ve found a great way to cool down from the summer sun!
After you make the cold soup recipe, please come back and leave a comment and a recipe rating so I know what you think of it!
I hope you enjoy the cucumber soup!
Chilled Cucumber Soup Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 seedless cucumbers peeled; 1/2 cup diced small, the rest coarsely chopped
- 1 ½ cups vanilla flavored Greek yogurt or plain Greek yogurt
- 3 tablespoons fresh lemon juice
- 1 clove garlic peeled
- ⅓ cup loosely packed fresh dill weed
- ¼ cup loosely packed fresh flat-leaf parsley
- 2 tablespoons loosely packed tarragon (about 10 leaves)
- ¼ cup extra virgin olive oil plus more for drizzling
- ¼ teaspoon kosher salt more or less, to taste
- ½ medium red onion finely diced
Instructions
- In a blender, combine the chopped cucumber with the yogurt, lemon juice, garlic, dill, parsley, tarragon and 1/4 cup of extra virgin olive oil. Blend on high speed for 2 minutes, until smooth. Season with salt, cover and refrigerate for 2-8 hours to allow flavors to meld and develop. (You can serve and eat right away, but the flavor of the soup won’t be nearly as refined and delicious.)
- Taste the soup for proper seasoning again just before serving. Pour the soup into bowls. Garnish with the finely diced cucumber, red onion and a drizzle of olive oil, and serve.
Nutrition
For dessert: lemon pound cake and fruit kebabs with yogurt dip would be delicious to serve after the cold soup!
Originally published May 2014.
At that time, I was a member of the Stonyfield Clean Plate Club. I received coupons for free product in exchange for writing this post, but all opinions are my own.
I love the idea of cucumber and yogurt in a cold soup. Especially one so quick and easy to make. I do a lot of salads for dinner in the summer and this would be a perfect accompaniment.
What a fun and easy summer soup! I would never have thought to add yogurt to cut down on the calories…great tip!!
Thanks so much, Dave! I really hope you have a chance to try it. It’s even awesome just poured onto a side salad!
I love soup – but I have never tried cold soup but this recipe looks so delicious, I think this will be one of my first recipes as soon as I have cukes locally!
The first time you sip on a cold soup, you might feel a little weird inside… but then the taste will bring you to your senses, Kel 😉
Seriously… try this drizzled over some salad greens if you feel weird eating it from a spoon. I have some friends who’ll drink cold soups straight from a glass!
This is such a beautiful soup. I have never thought to use cucumber as the main focus of the soup. The way you picked ingredients to highlight them, it is a doh! moment for me. I can’t wait to try this out.
Thank you so much, Sandi!
My initial thought was that this isn’t something I would like but then when I saw the yummy picture and read how you prepare it you changed my mind! Looks awesome and perfect for a hot summer day!
I’m glad to have changed your mind, Megan! It’s really yummi.. I hope you’ll try it sometime! Thanks for stopping by 🙂
…vanilla yogurt?
Yes Brianna… vanilla flavored yogurt. I used Stonyfield brand, but Dannon, Yoplait, and quite a few other brands also carry vanilla flavored yogurt
I’m a little confused about the yogurt as well. The recipe says “vanilla flavored plain”. Vanilla yogurt and plain yogurt are two very different flavors. Which one did you use? Vanilla flavored yogurt seems like it would add an unnecessary sweetness to the soup.
Thanks!
Hi Kelly,
I apologize for the confusion. It seems that the recipe program I use decided to omit my commas! 😉
You can use absolutely any type of yogurt you’d like in this cucumber soup recipe. I personally use Vanilla flavored Greek yogurt for another layer of flavor.
What a delicious looking soup! I love cucumber and have never tried this! I WANT some!
Ohhhh, Prash, you’ll LOVE it! I’ll trade you a bowl of my soup for a plate full of your hasselback zucchini. It’s been on my mind ALL day! 😉
Looks and sounds so refreshing (and healthy!). Love it, Becca.
Thanks so much, Chris! It’s become a summer favorite!
Ugh, I wish I had Greek yogurt right now! Our central air broke last night and it’s 80 degrees in the house. I remembered seeing you made this, but I hadn’t checked out the post yet. If we can’t get the air fixed tonight, I’ll make my hubby take me for the ingredients!
Ugh, Bernadette…I feel your pain! Our A/C isn’t broken, but it works like crap, so I’m sitting in a puddle of sweat right now, too. This soup will be perfect for dinner tonight. I hope you love it!
Can this be made the night before and still taste good next day? Trying to find something to make for a brunch bridal shower.
Hi Kati. Yes, you can absolutely make the cucumber soup a day ahead! It will likely need to be stirred again, though. Also, you should wait until right before serving to add the fresh dill and olive oil for garnish. I hope you enjoy the recipe!
Thank you! Looks so delightful!
Fresh or dry tarragon?
About 10 fresh tarragon leaves, Kati.
Will plain yogurt work over plain Greek yogurt… i have a whole pint of good old fashioned plain yogurt
Yes! Definitely will still work 🙂
Hello there. made this wonderful soup for a summer outdoor party. So refreshing… I ended up modifying, ever-so cuz i used what i had available. Instead of seedless cucs i had normal ones and just cut out the seeds. Instead of Greek plain yogurt i used normal plain yogurt… followed the recipe and found after 8 hours it needed a little sumpin sumpin… so back in the blended and added a bit more garlic, red onion (bout 1/4 red onion), lime juice (1 tblsp), cilantro (to taste), and a good dollop of whole grain brown mustard… it smoothed together great and it was wonderful all around!!!