Phase: Stable phase. Raw cucumber is gentle in small amounts when you are settled, but skip raw, cold dishes on a flare day and stick to your team’s guidance.
When it is hot, the last thing you want is a bowl of broth, and the book leans heavily on warm soups. So here is a cold one for summer. No cooking, no oil, ready in five minutes with a blender. It is light, fresh, and feels like more of a treat than it has any right to, given how kind it is to your pancreas.
Makes: 2 bowls · about 2 g fat and 85 kcal a bowl
Ingredients
- Cucumber, 1 large (about 300 g / 10 oz), peeled, seeds scooped out, roughly chopped
- Low-fat or fat-free plain yogurt, 200 g / scant 1 cup
- Fresh dill, 1 tbsp, plus a little to garnish
- Fresh mint, a few leaves
- Garlic powder, a pinch, optional (fresh garlic is a permanent no on my list, and tolerance for the powder is personal)
- Lemon, half, juiced
- Salt, to taste (no pepper, it is on my permanent no list)
- Cold water, a splash, to loosen
- Ice cubes, to serve
Method
- Put the cucumber, yogurt, dill, mint, garlic powder, lemon juice and salt in a blender.
- Blend until smooth. Add a splash of cold water if it is too thick.
- Taste and adjust the lemon and salt. Chill for 20 to 30 minutes if you have time, it tastes better cold.
- Serve in bowls with an ice cube, a little dill on top, and a few thin cucumber slices.
Fat note: Very low if you use fat-free or low-fat yogurt, which is the whole trick. Check the yogurt label, that is where the only fat in this dish lives. Skip full-fat versions.
Safety note: Use pasteurised yogurt (almost all shop yogurt is) and keep the soup cold from fridge to bowl, since this is a raw, uncooked dish. Eat it the day you make it, do not leave it sitting out in the heat, and go gentle on the garlic powder if your gut is sensitive.
Stepan’s Rule: Use fat-free plain yogurt and the soup is essentially a free meal on your fat budget. The flavour comes from dill, mint and lemon, not from fat, so you lose nothing by going low.
Patient experience, not medical advice. Go gentle on the garlic powder if your gut is sensitive.
This is a small, nice thing for a hot day, and small nice things are most of what gets you through. Our community trades exactly these, the little wins that make the diet livable. Come swap yours.