This recipe for vegan creamy cauliflower soup offers a tasty, filling comfort food for cold winter’s nights – all without any animal products. The secret to its amazing taste is a combination of dried summer savory and parsley stirred liberally into the simmering vegetables. Here’s the full recipe and instructions for my vegan creamy cauliflower soup.
Vegan Creamy Cauliflower Soup
Equipment
- 1 stock pot with lid
- 1 sharp knife
- 1 blender (or immersion blender) If using a conventional blender, leave the middle part of the lid off and cover with a cloth while pureeing the soup to allow steam to escape.
Ingredients
- 1 large head cauliflower
- 2 containers 14 ounce containers of unsalted vegetable broth
- 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil
- 1 medium onion
- 1 cup diced mushrooms
- 1 cup diced carrots
- 1 cup diced celery
- 1 tablespoon dried summer savory
- 1 tablespoon dried parsley
Instructions
- Wash all vegetables. Peel carrots. Remove stem and leaves from cauliflower.
- Diced the carrots, celery, onions and mushrooms.
- Add olive oil to stock pot. Heat on low. Add vegetables and sauté for 15 minutes stirring frequently to prevent sticking.
- While the vegetables are sautéing, cut the cauliflower into small pieces. At the end of the sauté period, add cauliflower for 5 minutes.
- Add 1 tablespoon dried savory and 1 tablespoon of parsley. Stir. Add both containers of unsalted vegetable brother.
- Turn heat to high until the mixture reaches a boil, then turn the heat down to simmer. Cover with the lid cracked slightly open (a little off to the side) to allow steam to escape. Simmer for 45 minutes.
- After the simmering period, turn the heat off. Remove approximately 2/3 of the soup to the blender, working in small batches (I put the rest of the soup in a large 4 cup measuring cup until I was ready to blend it). Leave 1/3 of the mixture in the pot.
- Working in small batches, blend the soup until it is pureed. Be sure to leave the lid off of the blender and cover it with a cloth when blending to allow the steam to escape. Puree each batch until 2/3 of the soup is pureed. Then, pour the puree back into the pot, mixing with the remaining soup. Heat and enjoy.
- Note: If using a immersion blender, remove 1/3 of the soup from the pot. Use the immersion blender to blend the mixture in the pot. Then, pour the original 1/3 of the soup mix back into the pot, stir, heat and enjoy.
How Did the Recipe for Vegan Creamy Cauliflower Soup Come About?
They say necessity is the mother of invention…well, I created this recipe for creamy cauliflower soup when my husband went a little nuts at the discounted vegetable area in the grocery store.
Hubby knows I love cauliflower. When I was a little girl, my mother’s uncle used to stop by every fall with the trunk of his car stuffed with farm produce. He lived in Cutchogue, Long Island, where there are abundant farm stands. He would bring back crates (yes, they were literally wooden crates!) of broccoli, cabbage, and cauliflower. My mother would cut the cauliflower up into chunks for us to snack on and I loved the sweet taste of fresh, raw broccoli and cauliflower.
What You Can’t Grow, Buy
So every fall, I crave cauliflower. I’ve tried to grow it here at Seven Oaks Farm but I think our southern climate isn’t as conducive to growing it as New York, plus the worms…oh, the cabbage worms! I’ve grown a few small heads of cauliflower, but nothing great.
My husband, knowing how much I love it, is always on the lookout to buy it. But it is so expensive in the stores!
Thankfully, he noticed the discount rack at the supermarket, and has been picking up cauliflower for me every time it’s available.
Needed a New Recipe
However, I was starting to get sick of it.
He brought home head after head. I canned it into jardinière, or pickled mixed vegetables. I boiled it, I baked it. We started to get tired of it.
Then one day…I thought: soup. I had an old recipe for vegetable soup that was easy to convert to vegan creamy cauliflower soup. Adding mushrooms to the stock and the dried savory gave it the perfect taste! It became a family favorite.
Orange Cauliflower
Now my husband has brought home two wonderful orange cauliflowers. Did you notice the main picture here on this post? That’s what an orange cauliflower looks like. I have seen them advertised in seed catalogs, but have never tasted one before.
The taste is sweet, and a little milder than the white cauliflower. I imagine the orange variety might have more beta carotene and perhaps vitamin A than the regular white cauliflower. It made a great soup, however, and a pleasant change for us.
So that is how the recipe for vegan creamy cauliflower soup came about – too much cauliflower on hand bought at a great discount and the need for creativity. Did you make it? If so, drop me a note, below, and let me know how you liked it!
Jeanne Grunert is a certified Virginia Master Gardener and the author of several gardening books. Her garden articles, photographs, and interviews have been featured in The Herb Companion, Virginia Gardener, and Cultivate, the magazine of the National Farm Bureau. She is the founder of The Christian Herbalists group and a popular local lecturer on culinary herbs and herbs for health, raised bed gardening, and horticulture therapy.
