Cauliflower Potato Soup Recipe

No matter the season and no matter the weather, there's nothing more comforting than a hearty bowl of soup. Sure, soup is especially good on a chilly day, but even during the spring or summer, you can still bask in the rich and warm flavors that soup has to offer. Speaking of rich and warm flavors: It doesn't get much better than this cauliflower potato soup, courtesy of recipe developer Eric Ngo. 

"My favorite thing about this recipe is how easy it is to make a healthy soup that fills you up," Ngo explains. It's true — this soup will sate your hunger, but it's also loaded with vegetables, making it a balanced meal. "I recommend eating this soup with a slice of French bread," he adds, because after all: What soup is complete without some bonus carbs? If topped off with the optional bacon bits, chives, and crispy fried onions, this soup is reminiscent of a loaded baked potato. But it also has cauliflower, so it's, you know, healthy.

As you might have guessed, both cauliflower and potatoes are the main characters of this recipe, so you'll need both of those on hand. "Russet potatoes are best for soups; because of its starchy nature, it makes the creamiest soups," Ngo advises. 

Additional ingredients include an onion, chicken stock, a bay leaf, salt, and black pepper, plus fried onion bits, bacon bits, and chopped chives for garnish if you choose. Ngo notes that you could use vegetable stock instead of chicken to keep the dish (sans bacon garnish) vegetarian and vegan, and if you wanted to make extra creamy soup, you could add ½ cup of heavy cream toward the end.

One of the best things about this soup is its depth of flavor, thanks in part to roasting the vegetables before adding them to the soup. "Roasting elevates the flavor of your vegetables," Ngo explains. 

First, preheat your oven to 350 F and line a baking sheet with aluminum foil. Make sure that the cauliflower is chopped, the potatoes peeled and sliced, and the onion cut in half, then place everything onto the baking sheet. Drizzle some olive oil onto the vegetables, sprinkle on salt and pepper, then pop into the oven. Allow the vegetables to roast for 30 minutes.

As your veggies finish roasting, go ahead and add the chicken stock and bay leaf to a saucepan. Bring the stock to a boil, and once the vegetables are done in the oven, add them right into the pan. Allow the vegetables and stock to boil together for 10 minutes, then remove the bay leaf. Finally, use an immersion blender to blend everything down into a thick soup. (By the way, if you want to add heavy cream to your soup, now is the time to do it.)

If you don't have an immersion blender, you can transfer the contents to a standard countertop blender, working in batches if needed. Always be careful when blending hot ingredients, though.

Once your soup is blended, you can ladle servings into individual bowls, and optionally top each off with bacon bits, chives, and fried onion bits. "Croutons are a good alternative to fried onion bits," Ngo adds.

As for when to serve this soup, you really can't go wrong with making it a starter course for a full meal. "This dish would be served as an appetizer to the main dish," Ngo says. "Serve in small quantities as it can fill up your stomach quite easily!" Of course, a larger portion would make a very satisfying lunch as well.