This post may contain affiliate links. Please read our disclosure policy.
WW Recipe Makeover: Creamy Ham and Potato Soup
Help Me Make this AllRecipes.com recipe for Delicious Ham and Potato Soup, Lighter, Healthier and More Weight Watchers friendly and be entered in a drawing for a $50 Amazon Gift Card!!! (This giveaway is now over)
Image Source: AllRecipes
This recipe for Ham and Potato Soup from AllRecipes.com showed up in my inbox as a “Recent Favorite.” It’s got a 5 Star Rating and over 10,000 Reviews!
AllRecipes is by far the biggest and most popular recipe website on the internet. It’s a great resource for easy, tasty, family favorite recipes.
I use it all the time and if you’re a cook, there’s a good chance you do to.
To achieve lasting Weight Loss Success, you need to tweak the way you eat slowly and steadily in a way that doesn’t disrupt your life and family too much.
Seeking out lighter healthier Weight Watchers friendly recipes from sites like Simple Nourished Living can helpful.
But, even more helpful and sustainable for the long-term is learning to lighten up your own family favorite recipes!
So, I thought it would be helpful to take some popular recipes from AllRecipes.com and ask our readers to leave comments making suggestions on how they would make them lighter, healthier and more Weight Watchers friendly.
Delicious Ham and Potato Soup Recipe (AllRecipes)
This delicious recipe for ham and potato soup looks pretty easy, calls for basic ingredients and can be adapted lots of different ways.
According the recipe’s notes, it makes 8 servings at 195 calories each, which isn’t terrible.
This video shows how to make AllRecipe’s Ham and Potato Soup:
Question: What would you do to this recipe to make it lighter, healthier and lower in SmartPoints?
Suggestions from our Readers:
- Substitute lighter milk (skim, fat-free, 1%) or nondairy milk (almond, coconut, soy)
- Substitute olive oil or light butter for butter
- Decrease or eliminate butter
- Substitute Canadian bacon, turkey ham or low-sodium ham
- Use less ham or eliminate it
- Thicken the soup with a slurry (flour or cornstarch dissolved in the milk) instead of a roux (melted butter and flour)
- Partially puree the soup to thicken it instead of with the white sauce (melted butter, flour, milk)
- Thicken the soup with pureed cauliflower or onions or other vegetables
- Pureed vegetables instead of the butter and flour roux (cauliflower, onions carrots potatoes)
- Bulk it up with more vegetables (onion, celery, carrots, cauliflower, sweet potatoes, etc)
- Spice it up with garlic, red pepper flakes and/or green chiles
- Use wheat flour alternative (brown rice flour, soy flour, almond flour)
- Thicken with Greek yogurt
Here are Some Lighter Healthier Cooking Tips That Can Help:
- 3 Ways to Make Recipes Weight Watchers Friendly
- Cooking Light & Healthy: Easy Ways to Make Your Recipes Lighter & Healthier
AllRecipe’s Ham & Potato Soup Ingredients:
- 3-1/2 cups peeled and diced potatoes
- 1/3 cup diced celery
- 1/3 cup finely chopped onion
- 3/4 cup diced cooked ham
- 3-1/4 cups water
- 2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules
- 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
- 1 teaspoon ground white or black pepper, or to taste
- 5 tablespoons butter
- 5 tablespoons all-purpose flour
- 2 cups milk
Click Here for AllRecipes Delicious Ham & Potato Soup Recipe Instructions
Recipe Notes
I loved reading all these clever suggestions for lightening up this AllRecipes Ham and Potato Soup!
It just goes to show that cooking is a creative process and there’s no one way!
When we learn to depend less on recipes and cook foods our way, the easier and more fun cooking becomes.
It’s like riding your bike without training wheels! But, like anything, it takes practice.
Here’s what I would do to lighten up this soup:
Only Use One Pot.
Because I’m a lazy cook, I would never use two pots to make soup, which is what the original instructions suggest when they tell you to make a separate white sauce to add to your boiled vegetables and ham. For me, one of the beauties of soup is that it’s a one pot dish. So, I’d find a way to thicken it all in one pot.
Eliminate the Roux/White Sauce.
I’m also not usually a fan of creamy soups thickened with a roux (melted fat/flour). They usually taste thick and pasty to me. That’s just a personal preference, probably passed down from my mom. And it’s a good thing for lightening up recipes since a lot of the calories in this recipe come from the 5 tablespoons of butter.
Puree.
I prefer to thicken my soups by pureeing a portion of the finished soup either with a stick blender or in a blender and then adding it back into the soup.
If The Soup Still Doesn’t Seem Thick Enough…
I’d thicken it with a slurry, which is essentially flour dissolved in a bit of liquid and then stirred into the bubbling soup. It’s the way my Mom always made gravy and it allows you to thicken soups/gravies without added fat.
Bulk It Up.
I’d definitely add more vegetables to bulk it up, without changing the integrity. I’d probably stick to additional onion, celery, potato, and cauliflower.
Skip or Use Less Milk.
I might add a little milk or cream at the end if I felt like the soup needed a touch of richness. But because my tastebuds are used to eating much lighter than they once did, I’d probably think it was fine.
Taste and Adjust Seasonings.
I’d taste the soup and then add salt and pepper until I liked the flavor.
Garnish.
If time permitted and I had some on hand, I’d garnish the with fresh chopped parsley. (I live within a 3-mile radius of several grocery stores and can buy huge bunches of parsley for $.5o. I realize this isn’t true for everyone. I spent a few years living in rural Wisconsin, where the closest grocery store with fresh parsley was more than 30 miles away, and learned to be just fine without it.)
Skipping the butter, flour and milk and using cauliflower turns this into a *2 SmartPoint soup.
How Many Calories and WW Points in Ham and Potato Soup Made Lighter?
According to my calculations, my lightened up version of this ham and potato soup has about 90 calories.
To see your WW Points for this recipe, track it in the WW App!
(You must be logged into WW on a smartphone or tablet.)
2 SmartPoints (Green plan)
2 SmartPoints (Blue plan)
1 SmartPoints (Purple plan)
2 PointsPlus (Old plan)
If you like this lightened up ham and potato soup, be sure to check out my other easy, healthy Weight Watchers friendly soup recipes including Creamy Potato Mushroom Soup, Slow Cooker Smoked Salmon Potato Leek Soup, Slow Cooker Potato Cauliflower Soup, Slow Cooker Ham and Wild Rice Soup and CrockPot Leftover Ham Bone Soup
If you’ve made this Enlightened Ham and Potato Soup, please give the recipe a star rating below and leave a comment letting me know how you liked it. And stay in touch on Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter for the latest updates.
All Recipe Ham & Potato Soup Recipe Made Lighter
Ingredients
- 4 cups peeled and chopped potatoes
- 1/2 cup chopped celery
- 1 cup chopped onion
- 10 ounces cauliflower (1/2 medium head)
- 4 cups water
- 2 tablespoons chicken bouillon granules
- 1/2 teaspoon salt, or to taste
- 1/4 teaspoon ground white or black pepper, or to taste
- 3/4 cup diced cooked ham
Instructions
- Combine the potatoes, celery, onion, cauliflower, water, chicken bouillon, salt and pepper in a soup pot.
- Bring to a boil, then cook over medium heat until potatoes are tender, about 10 to 15 minutes.
- Stir in the ham.
- Taste and add more salt and pepper as necessary.
- If the soup is too thick, thin with a bit more water or milk.
Notes
(Must be logged into WW on a smartphone or tablet.) 2 SmartPoints (Green plan) 2 SmartPoints (Blue plan) 1 SmartPoints (Purple plan) 2 PointsPlus (Old plan)
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
More Easy + Healthy Soup Recipes For Weight Watchers
- Baked Potato Soup (SkinnyTaste)
- Vegan Potato Soup with Beans & Kale (Cookin’Canuck)
- Lentil & Sweet Potato Stew (EatYourselfSkinny)
- Roasted Sweet Potato Soup (LaaLoosh)
- Turkey, Barley & Sweet Potato Soup (SkinnyKitchen)
- Sausage, Kale & Potato Soup (Copycat Olive Garden Zuppa Toscana) (OrganizeYourselfSkinny)
- Broccoli Cheese & Potato Soup (SkinnyTaste)
- Creamy Chicken & Potato Soup (SkinnyKitchen)
6/1/16 GIVEAWAY HAS ENDED!!
The winner of the Gift Card is:
Deanna Harrison, “I love onions in my potato soup, so I would thicken it up with boiled pureed onion, which I would blend with nonfat powdered milk, to make a creamy broth. Delicious.”
Congratulations Deanna, Contact support@simple-nourished-living.com to claim your prize! And thanks to all of you who stopped by and participated. I’m so grateful for each and every one of you.
TO ENTER
To enter the giveaway, just answer the following question in the Comments section of this post:
- How would you make this recipe lighter, healthier and more Weight Watchers friendly?
Just let me know what would you do to make this recipe lighter and healthier and you’re entered to win the $50 Amazon Gift Card!
THE RULES
One entry per person, please
Winners will be announced next Wednesday. Be sure to check back to see if you won.
Good luck!
I would leave out the ham and potatoes. Sub calif lower instead.
I would replace half the potatoes with carrots! They pick up flavors really well in soups, so I don’t think you would even notice the difference!
I would leave out the butter and flour. I like the idea of pureed cauliflower, I have never done that but I have pureed chickpeas to thicken soups.
I would substitute cauliflower for part of the potatoes, add some olive oil instead of butter (and a much smaller amount) and for the milk I would use either skim milk or possibly almond milk or use broth for part.
I would puree some of the potatoes instead of using milk, butter, flour. and increase the amount of chicken stock. Also add some broccoli, and increase the amount of onions and celery as well.
I would change the flour and use almond flour instead.
I would probably use 1% milk and less butter. Might up the veggies too with celery and cauliflower
I really don’t like milk, so I would use a non-dairy alternative like plain unsweetened almond milk instead of the milk.
Like Margie and Kim, I would reduce or eliminate the butter and flour – and I really liked Kim’s idea of thickening the soup with pureed cauliflower.
Also agree that some red pepper flakes sound good – and maybe a little rosemary (but that might add a weird texture).
I kind of wonder too what would happen to if you substituted sweet potatoes for half the white potatoes.
And being that I do like a little spice, I also might throw in some green chiles.
This is a really great idea – thanks for giving us the opportunity to share our own recipe ideas and to learn how others might go about lightening recipes in their own kitchen.
To make it lighter, I would leave out the butter and flour and thicken it with pureed cauliflower that was cooked in chicken broth.
To make it healthier I would use low sodium ham and low sodium chicken broth and add some diced carrots.
Also, the recipe doesn’t say a serving size – 1 cup? 1 1/2 cups?
It actually does say about one cup
I would use skim milk and cut the butter and flour in half. Add some red pepper flakes for a little kick.