Now that fall is back, it’s time to start doing soup again. This one is thick and creamy, great by itself, or as an ingredient in casseroles — anywhere you’d normally do a can of cream of celery soup. Because canned soup is usually nasty. Oh sure, it tastes good, but have you ever read the ingredients? Ick.
This one only has five ingredients, not counting the salt and pepper. Oh wait, and not counting the butter for sautéing the veggies. Okay, so it’s got eight ingredients, but if you don’t already have butter, salt and pepper in your kitchen, you’re not reading this blog, you’re calling for take-out.
Ingredients
1 pound each asparagus, onion, russet potato
one cup heavy cream
4 cloves garlic (about 1-2 tablespoons minced)
salt and pepper to taste
2-3 tablespoons butter
Directions
Peel and dice the onion, and mince the garlic.
You might notice in that link that last time I did the garlic I slice lengthwise first. I’ve decided it really doesn’t matter much.
Once the aromatics are prepped, melt the butter in a large pot or dutch oven over high heat.
Add the onion, and stir to make sure it’s all coated with butter.
Once the onion starts to look a little clear, add some salt and the garlic and turn the heat down low.
Now for the asparagus. Unless you just harvested it yourself, the cut end will have dried out. Snap one off by hand to see how much has dried, then cut that length off from all of them.
Now cut the rest into pieces an inch long or less. (You don’t need to mince it, but the pieces will need to fit into your immersion blender.) Add the pieces to the pot.
Stir, add some pepper, and cook over low heat, stirring occasionally, until the asparagus is tender.
When you test it, don’t worry if it’s still a little stringy. You’ll take care of that with the blender.
While the asparagus is cooking, dice the potatoes. You can peel them first if you want, or just wash them well and leave the skins on.
Add the potatoes, stir to make sure everything is mixed together nicely, and add enough water to just cover everything.
Cook over medium heat until the potatoes are soft. If you did a small dice like I did, this can take as little as 10 minutes.
Now hit it with an immersion or “stick” blender until everything is smooth.
Check the seasoning and add salt and pepper if needed. (Don’t be afraid of the salt. Canned soup may have way too much, but you do need some for it to taste good.)
Blend again and simmer a few more minutes to let the flavors blend.
The dark specks you see are the pepper and the potato skins. If you want a “cleaner” look, use white pepper and peel the potatoes.
Remove from heat, and stir in the cup of heavy cream.
Here is where you can get a little bit fancy. Fill a shallow soup bowl, then add a few tablespoons of cream right in the center. Using the tip of a spoon, or a chopstick, trace lines from the center out toward the edge of the bowl. Then trace a circle around the edges.
Serve as is.
Or add fresh baked biscuits.
And that’s it.
I’m going to do something similar for Halloween, with a dark topping on tomato soup, but I’m going to make it look like a spider. Then on another bowl, I’ll do the cream but make it look like a spiderweb. I haven’t figured out what I’ll use for the dark topping. Any ideas? Let’s hear them in the comments.
Want more like this? For more recipes like this, that you can hold right in your hands, and write on, take notes, tear pages out if you want (Gosh, you're tough on books, aren't you?) you might be interested in How To Cook Like Your Grandmother, 2nd edition, Illustrated. Or to learn your way around the kitchen, check out Starting From Scratch: The Owner's Manual for Your Kitchen.
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19 Comments
Can you get your hands on some squid ink to mix into some sort of vegetable coulis?
Love "cream of" soups. With this one, I guess it's pretty much Cream of (Insert name of lovely vegetable here) Soup. Definitely my kind of recipe:)
I mentioned the squid ink to my wife. She said she had it once before, and it stained her teeth black for about a day. Oh, and it tasted gross. So yeah, I think squid ink is out of the running.
You're right about "insert name" for the soup. This should work just as well with celery, broccoli, carrot, pretty much anything. It's a really simple base, and it takes seasoning well.
This soup is a must try for my family. My mouth is watering as I am reading the recipe. THANK YOU
What about something else w/enough color to "dye" with…maybe beets, or berries….the color could be added to the cream to keep the correct consistency & minimize any flavor changes??
Rebekah, wipe your chin. Drooling in front of the children sets a bad example.
Meg, blackberry might work color-wise, but I don't think the flavor would work very well with tomato soup.
Ooh, wait, maybe pesto and go for a green spider. That could work.
Reduced red wine w/ beef stock could be a good flavor combo with the asparagus soup. Reduced Balsamic Vinegar is GREAT too. I'm not sure how it would do with the cream based soup, but its an option to make things colorful. Home made liquified cream of corn could work for something yellow. Pesto is good for green, but you can also use Mint. Want red, orange, or BRIGHT yellow? Nasturtiums are flowers that you can eat! They are a little spicy, but made like pesto they're AWESOME! Squash Blossoms are excellent to eat, too. Sauteé them with a little butter then liquify and I'm sure you'll be in business. Or maybe you already thought about it and I'm just being a dork. That happens, sometimes.
Ooh, balsamic sounds good for tomato … actually it will be pizza soup.
Ooh, I like the balsamic idea! Also, mixing some chive oil (or other herbs-pureed-in-oil oil with some red pepper puree, or just some of the tomato soup might make a black-ish color.
Looking forward to seeing what you finally decide on.
Hi Drew,
You could colour cream with foodcolouring 'ink'. Or make a spiderweb from black angelhair pasta.
Think i will do that in a pumpkinsoup because my son hates asparagus
The Cream Of *** recipe looks good, though I think I'll stay a bit more in season & save the asparagus for next March!
For your "spider"… I made a pot roast recently that used coffee & soy sauce (thickened with cornstarch in the end)as the gravy. Might be tasty on a Cream of Tomato or Co Pumpkin?
How about some pesto sauce? Should make a good combo–basil and tomatoes. Yummmm.
Caught up on your blog this afternoon, and decided that this soup sounded absolutely delicious. So I made it. (You can see the results on my flickr account – flickr.com/susskins) I also made the egg salad to go with it.
Big thumbs up from my hubby Fred. Came out great, although I did use just a bit too much salt for my taste. I'll do better next time.
Fred also enjoyed eating the egg salad sandwich above the soup, so that the stray bits of egg dropped in for later retrieval.
Oh, and one minor substitution; I had some bacon drippings from this morning, so I used those instead of the butter. Worked beautifully. And the house smelled great while I was sweating the onion and asparagus.
Great recipe, Drew! Thumbs up from Minnesota.
This looks like a creamy broccoli soup I do. Sometimes it's so creamy, I don't add the cream. All hail the power of the Mighty Spud!! I still have to wait for the temperature to drop down here in Texas before I try it. The weather people are talking about heat indexes for tomorrow….sigh. I miss Fall.
I love cream of ____ soups! They are quick, easy, and you dont have to use a lot of ingrediants. Try yellow squash, cream cheese, s&p next time.
p.s. As a culinary graduate I cant imagine using squid ink… lol
Well, hopefully you were there to tell her that her teeth turned black. It would be horrible if she started to walk around public that way lol.
M@tt
http://www.brioguy.com
Thanks for all the suggestions. I'm going with the pesto and balsamic vinegar. Should look and taste great.
Susskins, was that a heart you did with the cream? That's just so cute! (Yes, that was my sarcastic voice. Doesn't mean it isn't true.)
Stephanie, you can have fall if it means I can get some more tomatoes.
Matt, I wasn't around for the inking. Though I doubt it would have done much good. From her description, the staining lasted for a while.
first off i just found your blog and LOVE it!,then as i was looking for asparagus recipies i found this one and the thing that cinched it for me was you making it in the same pot my mom handed down to me from my great grandma. thanks again, colleen
Colleen, we got the set from my wife’s great-aunt. Love them.
Question; why cook the asparagus until tender and then add the potatoes to cook further?
Years of experience tells me that this is in reverse.
The addition of balsamic to plain old asparagus soup is a wonderful thing! The other blends and additions I’m not so sure of.
One suggested modification is to use the lower stalk ends. I trim the very dry/white portions then cut them up, boil a few, (15) minutes and discard them. The resulting broth can add a great deal of flavour.
I do it this way to make sure I don’t have stringy, tough asparagus. I did mention that the immersion blender will take care of most of that, but any little bit helps.
The batch I had was pencil-thin, so I didn’t really have large white ends to deal with. If I have thicker stems next time I’ll try your tip. Thanks.