Low Carb Egg Drop Soup (Keto, Paleo, & Gluten Free too!)

Making your own keto and low carb egg drop soup recipe at home is super easy and simple! In under 15 minutes, you can have an authentic bowl of egg drop soup that’ll be the best you’ve ever tasted. 

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What Is Egg Drop Soup?

When you go out to a Chinese restaurant or an Asian Fusion place to eat, there’s almost always egg drop soup on the menu. Sometimes it’ll automatically come with your meal, but I’m sure many have heard of Chinese egg drop soup even if you haven’t yet tried it yourself.

Egg drop soup is a simple Chinese soup recipe with a seasoned broth, ginger, garlic, and soy with strands of cooked egg “ribbons” floating throughout the tasty Asian broth. 

Honestly? While I’ve always considered egg drop soup good and often order it when we go out (that or hot and sour soup of course!), you will not believe how much more FLAVOR homemade low carb egg drop soup has and we kid you not….

This is the BEST low carb egg drop soup recipe you’ve ever had!!

Keto Egg Drop Soup

Being able to make your own keto egg drop soup recipe at home is a win win, you can customize it however you want plus it’s much healthier than getting take-out.

Not only is it low in calorie, keto-friendly, paleo, Whole 30, gluten-free, and can be vegetarian with a simple adaption. It’s essentially a zero carb soup recipe too!

This authentic egg drop soup recipe is so tasty and easy, you might not ever order it from a restaurant again! Seriously! And with no recipe adaptions, it also works perfectly for many of today’s dietary preferences and diets like low carb, keto, gluten-free, paleo, Whole 30, and vegetarian.

Why This Recipe Works

• The simple low carb egg drop soup cooks in less than 15 minutes
• It’s the best most flavorful egg drop soup you’ll ever have
• This is a keto egg drop soup, plus GF, paleo and low carb
• You can easily add hearty ingredients like chicken, shrimp, mushrooms, tofu, noodles or corn
• It’ll satisfy Chinese soup cravings with basic pantry ingredients
• Wondering about the carbs in egg drop soup? Just 0.6 per serving!

If you love Asian inspired recipes like we do, you’ll also want to make our egg roll in a bowl or cauliflower fried rice (keto, gluten free, whole30) to serve with the egg drop soup recipe. Be sure to try some of our other popular soup recipes like chicken zucchini noodle soup, crock-pot taco soup, broccoli cheddar soup, and stuffed pepper soup.

And if you have a pressure cooker then you’ll definitely want to try our instant pot egg drop soup! 

Ingredient Notes

• chicken broth 
• large eggs
• soy sauce, tamari or coconut aminos – both tamari and cocononut aminos are gluten free and are the best options if you’re on a strict keto diet.
• grated fresh ginger – we love to buy the frozen minced ginger cubes from Trader Joes, it makes it easy to always have ginger on hand for Asian inspired dishes.
• Sesame oil – this is an essential ingredient to the recipe, it won’t taste like authentic egg drop without it.
• garlic salt
• green onions
• salt and pepper to taste
• optional- red pepper flakes, sriracha sauce

Easy egg drop soup is very easy to double or triple! As written, the soup serves four 1 cup servings.

Some egg drop soup recipes use cornstarch as a thickener, we love this soup as is and don’t feel it needs thickening, so this is also a low carb egg drop soup recipe without cornstarch. We do tell you how to add it in the recipe instructions, by chance you want it a little thicker.

If you don’t have fresh ginger but you do have dried ginger, you can swap the fresh for 1 tsp of dried ginger. One of my favorite cooking hacks is to buy frozen grated ginger from Trader Joes, no grating required! We just pop the 1 tsp cubes into the pot.

Dietary Notes

If you’ve been wondering is egg drop soup gluten free? Many people who can’t have gluten stay away from soy sauce. To keep the egg drop soup gluten free be sure to use wheat free Tamari sauce instead of the soy or use coconut aminos. 

You can also use either soy sauce, wheat-free and gluten-free soy (also known as tamari sauce), OR you can use coconut aminos, which is a soy substitute without sugar, gluten, and is paleo/Whole 30 friendly.

Egg drop soup vegetarian version– simply swap the chicken broth for vegetable broth and this becomes a vegetarian egg drop soup recipe. 

Step by Step Instructions

With just a couple quick steps, you’ll have the keto egg drop soup on the table…all you need to do is simmer the ingredients in a pot and then slowly stir in beaten eggs to form the ribbons. Easy peasy!

Simmer

Add the chicken broth, soy sauce (or tamari or coconut aminos), ginger, sesame oil, and garlic salt to a medium pot. Heat on medium-high until the seasoned broth starts to boil. Turn the soup down to low and simmer.

Make Egg Ribbons

Beat the eggs in a small bowl.

While constantly stirring the broth mixture, slowly stir in the eggs in one direction to create the egg “ribbons.”

Season

Add the sliced green onion to the pot, season with salt and pepper if desired. Divide the soup between 2-4 soup bowls.

Recipe Tips

• Making the soup spicier– Add a sprinkle of red pepper flakes or sriracha sauce. 
• To thicken the egg drop soup- If you want to thicken the egg drop soup, add up to 2 Tbsp of corn starch along with the cold broth, soy/tamari/coconut aminos, ginger and sesame oil before heating it. Whisk until smooth to keep the corn starch from clumping. Many people following a low carb diet use arrowroot as a thicken instead.
• Tasty additions– cooked chicken, tofu, keto pelmeni noodles, rice noodles, mushrooms or corn (if you aren’t following keto).
• Add the eggs in a slow steady stream while you’re stirring the soup at the same time for best egg results. If you stir the eggs in too slow you’ll get short egg bits instead of the pretty ribbons you’re used to with this soup.

Common Questions

Is Egg Drop Soup Keto?

If you’ve been following a low carb or keto diet, you might be wondering if this is a keto egg drop soup recipe too. And the answer is definitely YES! 

This honestly makes one of the BEST soups for keto because it’s almost carb-free, just uses simple ingredients found in many kitchens, and whips up in just 15 minutes.

When you’re hungry on keto and need something to fill you up that still has fat and protein, but not a lot of calories or carbs, egg drop soup on keto is an amazing soup option.

How Many Carbs in Egg Drop Soup?

The core ingredients in low carb egg drop soup are chicken broth, eggs, sesame oil, a sprinkle of green onions, and a seasoning like soy/gluten free soy (tamari), or coconut aminos.

If you’re wondering how many carbs in egg drop soup, there are ONLY 0.6 net carbs per serving depending on what brands of ingredients you’re using! Yep….you got that right, the egg drop soup carbs are less than 1 net carb per cup!

Chicken broth, eggs, and sesame oil all have NO carbs. Making sure to use either Tamari sauce or coconut aminos instead of regular soy sauce (that has sugar) will make this an almost no carb soup recipe. Who knew you could make a filling soup with so little carbs.

We used the San-J brand Tamari found at most grocery stores that is gluten-free and sugar-free, it has just 1 carb per Tbsp….which means the soup only has 0.25 carbs per serving before adding a sprinkle of green onion.

And then the optional green onions have a total of 1.5 net carbs for 2 of them, which is an easy thing to cut back on. And even making the recipe as stated with green onions or scallions only adds 0.35 net carbs to each serving.

My mind was blown when I realized the total egg drop soup carbs are only 0.6 per cup of soup!

Nutrition of Egg Drop Soup

The nutrition of egg drop soup is honestly pretty surprising! Besides having less than one net carb per serving, this tasty and filling bowl of soup has under 100 calories per cup.

The specific brand you are using for the ingredients can change the nutrition of egg drop soup, be sure to check the labels. Our chicken broth, eggs, and sesame oil were from Trader Joes, the San-J Tamari came from Kroger.

Egg drop soup nutrition

• Egg drop soup Calories- 52
• Fat- 4 g
• Cholesterol- 92 g
• Sodium- 760 g
• Carbs- 0.6 g
• Protein 4 g

How Long is Egg Drop Soup Good For?

This low carb keto egg drop soup recipe keeps for up to 3 days in the fridge. It’s easy to re-heat in the microwave or on the stovetop in a small pot. Sometimes soup thickens as it sits in the fridge, just add a little more chicken broth to your bowl before heating if you want it soupier.

This is not a good soup for freezing, so just make a small batch you’ll eat for a day or two.

More Low Carb Soups

• chicken zucchini noodle soup
•  crock-pot taco soup
•  broccoli cheddar soup
• stuffed pepper soup

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