Creamy Cauliflower Thyme Soup Recipe (With Video)

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Hey guys! This is Heather from HealthyVeganRecipes.net. Today I wanted to show you a way to make cauliflower into an amazing creamy soup.

Cauliflower is a super nutritious vegetable but I don’t know about you but it’s not my – it’s not the top of my list of favorite vegetables. Most people think of cauliflower is as like a vessel for dip which is fine if you’re eating a healthy dip.

But there are ways to make this vegetable delicious so let’s get on to that. If you want to skip ahead to the recipe I’ll post that over at HealthyVeganRecipes.net but for those of you who wants to see how it’s done let’s get started with cooking.

The base of this soup is gonna be some cooked buckwheat and for those of you who haven’t seen buckwheat before it’s kind of a triangular shape grain. There it is in its untoasted form so a lot of the time you’ll see it listed as kasha and it’s kind of a brown color that’s when it’s been toasted and has a really distinctive flavor.

Whereas if you can find this more beige color, it hasn’t been toasted and the flavor is a lot softer so I like to use this type of buckwheat. So what’s your gonna do is start with three quarters of a cup of buckwheat, put that on a pot with three cups of water, bring it to a boil and then turn it down to simmer and leave it with cover so that the water doesn’t evaporate and that will take about 25 minutes to cook.

So I started this about 15 minutes ago and now what I’m gonna do is lightly steam a sweet onion and my cauliflower because when you cook the cauliflower just a little bit it helps to soften the flavor and the texture so that’s its gonna really work well in our creamy soup.

So chop up your onions in whatever size chunk you want, this is gonna get blended so it doesn’t really matter but if you get too small of a chunk though it cook really quickly and probably get mushy or if it’s too big they won’t cook fast enough so somewhere in between.

Your gonna put a little bit of water on the bottom so I’ve put just like – just to cover the bottom of the pot so they won’t burn. I’ve been getting more and more of this method of cooking, some people call it water sautéing but really it’s just steaming.

You can soothe the onions and the cauliflowers if you wish just get these both in the pot together, you just want to cook them lightly to soften them and not to lose too many nutrients. If you soothe just try to use as little oil as possible.

If you do sauté them it does help retains some of the flavor so if you’re in transition to plant base diet or if you’re cooking for people who are meat eaters or use to very intense flavors you might want to sauté just to – just to win them over.

But for me once your taste buds get in to healthy eating, you realize that all you need is the flavor of the foods. Once that gets boiling you wanna turn it down a little bit and once you get all of your cauliflower into the pot, put a lid on top so that the water does not evaporate.

If you sprinkle a little bit of salt on here as well they will cook a little bit faster so you can minimize the amount of time these veggies are on the heat.

Now the reason I choose to steam over sauté is because even though the flavor is a little bit softer anytime you cook with oil your gonna be creating some toxins and a healthy body can handle toxins so that’s not a huge problem but if I have the choice I’m going to, I’m gonna choose the non oil cooking route.

So ten minutes and your cauliflower should be just lightly steamed. The buckwheat should be nice and soft. Cooking it with the extra cup of water means that it’s gonna be super super soft and easy to blend into this puree of soup.

So, now we’re moving on to the fun part of pureeing and what you can use is either a hand blender which is really easy for clean up but doesn’t quite blend fully or you can use a blender or a food processor.

And I’ve got my food processor out so what we’re gonna do is transfer the buckwheat and the steam veggies into the processor and then puree it until it somewhat smooth.

So I’ve got the cauliflower pureed first and the onion. When you put that into the food processor you want to make sure there’s no liquid in here and just chop up the vegetables first and then that makes some room for me to add the buckwheat there it is cooked nice and soft.

So I’ll put that in here and then puree it again so you can see that the buckwheat blend up really nice and smoothly. If you don’t have buckwheat by the way you can use any other type of grain just cook it with plenty of water so that it gets nice and soft.

Buckwheat if just one of the softest so it blend up really really nice but rice will work well, quinoa works as well, whatever works for you.

So at this point you wanna thin your soup out a little bit with some water and you can use the little bit of water that you cooked your cauliflower and onion in because that will have some nutrients in it.

When you’re using a food processor you can’t fill it too full so that’s one downside, that’s probably pretty much of what I’m gonna be left with and then what I’ll do is I’ll put it back in the pot and add a little bit more water at the end to finish thinning it out because it is quite thick.

So now comes the bit of the fun part and what we’re gonna do is make this even creamier because cauliflower isn’t really a creamy vegetable even when you blend this up with the buckwheat it’s still a little bit chunky.

So what we’re gonna do is add some nut or seed butter, you can use whatever kind you like almond, tahini, I’ve got sesame seed butter today. You’re gonna put in about a tablespoon and it likes to stick to the spoon. Get that in there.

And then with that if you add a little bit of acid so either apple cider vinegar or what I’m gonna use is half a lemon that will combine with the nut or seed butter and make it super super creamy.

And you can also zest the outside of your lemon for some added flavor so it’s probably hard to tell the difference on the camera but now that I’ve blended it up with the lemon juice its much much creamier and it also has a much richer feel in the mouth.

So what I’m gonna do now is transfer this back to the pot, add some more water to thin it out and add the seasonings so for seasoning we’ve got the super awesome fresh chimes from the garden goes wonderfully well with the lemon juice.

Then I’ve got some nutritional yeast which is this yellow flaky stuff and it is for flavor that’s why I add it. It’s for the cheesy kind of flavor so if you can’t find it don’t worry about it but it will add a definite cheesiness, creaminess to your soup.

I’m gonna have a little pinch of paprika just to spice it up a little bit and some salt and I use herbamere which is sea salt mix with some dried vegetables and dried herbs and a little bit of kelp.

So I love to use herbamere it adds flavor as well as reduces the amount of salt that you use. So stir that all together, give it a taste, add whatever else you like or change the flavorings to suit what you enjoy. And if you leave this to cook a little bit more, the flavors will really combine together nicely it makes a great leftovers too.

So enjoy your creamy cauliflower and thyme soup and I hope you like my super special tip for making it even creamier which is the nut or seed butter with the vinegar or lemon juice. That really helps with any recipe that you want to make super creamy is combining those and they really come together nicely.

And let me know what you think of this recipe by leaving me a comment. I would love to know whether you guys try it and what flavor combination you like to use in it and I will see you guys next time.