High calorie soups

Careful with the fat: make sure you balance that out with lots of protein and carbs which will actually provide the materials to rebuild lost muscle tissue. Rich brothy soups with lots of legumes such as lentils would be great... Any issues with solids? Red lentils can make a great soup without the lentil skins; it just breaks down into a purée. Hope your friend feels better!

 

How about French Onion Soup topped with lots of guyere and emmenthal cheese.

 

Bean and pea soups typically have a fair number of calories, and are not so high in fat, plus having protein and fibre.

And of course, as suggested above, you can easily puree the beans.

There's also those traditional Mediterranean/European soups thickened with crumbled bread, or things like avgolemono, thickened with egg and egg yolk. You could make a cream soup, and instead of using cream, use a blended silken tofu, to improve nutrition without the fat whack. Even if the person's rebuilding weight after a long illness, if you hit them with a load of fat calories, a lot of the regained weight will be... fat. Not so good.

 

What we do in Hospital kitchens when a Dietitian wants to add calories to a patients diet who has or is suffering from weight loss is to add what we call enhanced foods . This increases the total caloric content of the foods . For breakfast we always enhance the oatmeal by using margarine , evaporated milk , and brown sugar . At lunch we often have enhanced mashed potatoes which call for instant potatoes , margarine , scrambled egg , cottage cheese , and evaporated milk . At night we always enhance the soup . If it is cream based we use Roux , evaporated milk , whole milk , and your mirepoix and main ingredient . If its say a navy bean we just make sure to use a roux for thickening .
As you see , people who are sick or recovering from illness often have little or no appetite so sometimes this enhanced food is all that will be eaten . As you notice with the ingredients used to enhance the food they increase the protien , carbohydrate and the fat content considerably , which is what is needed in most sick or recovering patients . Of course this is just how we do it out here in my hospital , Happy Memorial day weekend , Doug

 

If digestibility is an issue, congee works well. It's basically chicken broth-based with (brown) rice cooked down to thicken it.

Beef mushroom barley would be good, I'd think. I like the lentil idea, as they are so nutritious. Split pea was a favorite of my brother's in the days when Mom tried to put meat on his bones. When I made it low fat I used turkey ham.

 

I've actually had a personal experience and gained a ton of weight on just plain chicken or pork ribs broth on a daily basis for just a few months. Super nutritious and not fatty at all.... just really nutritiously rich. I gained about 10 pounds in 3 months drinking a pot a day. Just chicken or pork ribs with veg.... (bone in of course). No need to add cream or carbs or fat!

 

Bacon Potato Soup

1 pound of bacon cut in bite sized pieces and fried off to remove fat. Save the fat to saute the veg

1 pound of potato cut in bite sized pieces

Small onion chopped

Celery chopped

saute the onion and celery in a little bacon fat until tender

Add the potatoes and bacon to the pot

Cover with whole milk and simmer until potatoes are tender.

Do NOT let this boil or the milk will break, you want a slow simmer.

I serve this with biscuits and butter and it makes a very filling high calorie meal. Also simple to make and very tasty.

Vegetable Beef Soup with Barley

Beef stock

Chopped beef from making the stock, if not enough I chop some chuck to toss in there.

Chopped carot

Chopped celery

Chopped onion

Chopped garlic

Crushed tomato(optional)

Quick Barley

Saute the onion, garlic and celery until tender. Add the stock, carrot and barley(and crushed tomato if using) then simmer(if add raw chopped chuck add it now) until the barley is tender. Add the cooked beef back to it and bring back to a simmer so the beef is hot.

Serve with biscuits or cornbread and butter

Beef stew

Cubed chuck

Beef stock

Chopped onion

Chopped garlic

Chopped carrot(bite size rounds)

bit of bacon fat

Potato cut in bite sized pieces

Saute onion and garlic until almost tender, add the beef stock and cubed chuck and simmer until the meat is about half done. Add the carrot and potato and simmer until all is tender. Thicken with a corn starch slurry(or flour...).

Serve with buttered biscuits  to sop up the gravy