Holy umami Batman! This cauliflower soup will have your family lobbying for leftovers. This soup has an incredible, mouthwatering cruciferous smell, and the flavor of this recipe will have you ladling out bowl after bowl. This is the recipe you'll want to make when you are craving comfort food. It's texture is creamy, and the flavor has all the caramelization you want from roasting vegetables with a light tanginess to balance it out. And the rosemary adds a green and fresh aspect to the flavor profile that makes this recipe robust in flavor. This soup is light enough for a warm summer day, yet hearty enough to be filling on a rainy afternoon. And perhaps the best part: you'll only have one pot to wash up at the end of it.
Unsplash by: Louis Hansel
While this recipe is certainly born out of COVID-19 induced creativity, I honestly wouldn’t be making this if my partner weren’t doing this strict diet competition with his best friend. Rules like no dairy other than butter, no added sugar, and no soy are cramping my normal gluten-free dinner routines. That said, after a full night with no sleep and an impending need to stock up on easy post-surgery soups and foods, I woke up from a nap craving a strong dose of comfort.
After I went to investigate my kitchen pantry, discovering a lack of, well, anything normal left, I realized I was definitely going to have to make my own recipe. While there’s a lot of food in the kitchen (thank you Costco membership), I did have a head of cauliflower that was starting to go bad and some vegan cheese I made the other day approaching the same state. It made me wonder if I could make that into a soup.
I have actually never tried a cauliflower soup before, so I wasn’t sure there would be any recipes to follow. A quick search of Pinterest revealed that, thankfully, I wasn’t the first person to crave a cauliflower soup, but none of the recipes fit my strange pantry and fridge situation. I entered my kitchen hoping that winging it would work out, but then I spied the last of my black garlic in the spice rack. At that point, I knew that was going to be the key to this soup, and it would work out great.
Shutterstock by: mnimage
Ingredients:
1 tablespoon of olive oil
Salt, to taste
3 cloves of black garlic
A few sprigs of rosemary
½ teaspoon of sage
1 head of cauliflower, roughly chopped (about 4 cups frozen or pre-chopped)
1 large onion
½ cup of portobello mushrooms
2-3 cups of your preferred stock
½ cup of vegan almond ricotta or cream cheese (optional)
Obsessedly by: Tori Highley
Grab your favorite stock pot or soup pan. You’ll want something that won’t get completely full as all of the ingredients are added if you are using an immersion blender. And definitely be sure it’s big enough if you plan to double the recipe.
Throw your glug of olive oil in the pan and turn the heat up to medium high. Let that heat up a little bit (not so hot as to burn the oil) before you throw your cauliflower pieces in the pot. You should hear some powerful pops when you do. Let your cauliflower sear a bit to really release the delicious sulfurous flavors—this will really make all the difference in flavor.
Once your cauliflower has some dark brown spots and the aroma is in the air, add in the onions, mushrooms, black garlic, and herbs. Searing these is not needed, so you feel free to stir the vegetables around as much or as little as you want at this point. You should really smell those flavors release and mix with one another. Feel free to inhale.
Shutterstock by: KrimKate
After a few minutes, your onions will have softened a bit. Pour in your preferred stock. I used chicken stock, because that’s what I had in the fridge, but your favorite vegetable stock should be fine too. And, if you have to make a quick vegetable broth from scratch instead, go light on the veggies and just leave them in the stock pot as the water boils. Add in two cups at first and if that doesn’t quite cover your vegetables, add a little more stock or just plain old water to get it above the veggie line.
Bring this up to boiling, then let it simmer on medium for about 20 minutes, or until the cauliflower and onions look very soft and the black garlic color has come through the whole broth.
Now, pull it off of the heat and either carefully pour it into a blender or get your immersion blender ready. Blend the mixture until you are happy with the thickness. At this point I blended in my homemade vegan almond ricotta cheese to really boost the thickness and add in some calories, but it’s completely optional. If it seems too thick to you, feel free to add a little water or milk to thin it out. The consistency is all up to you.
The modifications are endless.
I found this recipe to be the perfect blend of strong flavor and easy to throw together, but my partner felt it was missing something. If I could have run to the store, there are a few things I would try adding.
Roasted parsnips are tender, sweet, and just a little bit spiced, and they would have really kicked this recipe up a notch. I have some seeds sprouting in my garden, so maybe when my parsnips are actually ready in the winter, I’ll try it that way. The only bother is that I really would roast them first, which adds time and dishes to this one pot recipe. Not that anyone ever has leftover parsnips, but if you do, this might be the recipe to pull out.
I strongly considered adding spinach, despite what it would have done to the color. There are two reasons: it could have pulled out the rosemary flavors a little more, and it would have added a little extra nutritional value. While we don’t struggle to get our vegetables in, I know some people do, and hiding a few more vegetables in a recipe is a great way to eat a balanced diet. With my partner’s diet right now, we are eating spinach almost every day, and while I like the stuff, I just didn’t want any more of it.
How about real cheese? I long for the days when I can buy a log of goat cheese at Costco and actually cook with it, but for now vegan cheese will have to do. I mean, if the soup were only for me, I certainly could get that goat cheese log, or even a basket of ricotta. However, I feel that food really is meant to be shared, and if I CAN modify my cooking in order to share it, I will. That said, when my partner’s diet is over, this recipe might get rewritten based on some serious cheese experimentations.
