Look at a pile of vegetables, and it’s the rare body among us that gets overheated. But bear witness to a velvety parade of jewel-hued soups, and who among us doesn’t break a sweat?
Just look at how stunning crimson harissa, lion-orange carrot, golden coconut curry and the like are below. These are the good-for-you, incredible-tasting bowls you need right now. Take your vitamins and minerals in liquid form, folks: Good soup is the boost you need (and deserve) to make it to the crocuses and verdant expanses of March and April.
1. Carrot and Red Pepper Soup With Harissa
If we had to pick soup favorites, we’d go with the ones that involve somehow sweetening the veggies first (either in the stove or on top of it), then blitzing them all in one go. Enter: carrot and red pepper soup with harissa. Load up a heist-worthy sheet pan of veggie jewels: carrots; red bell peppers; red onion and garlic. Coat them in olive oil, paprika and coriander and roast. Combine with stock and harissa; garnish with a homemade sesame-harissa oil. The result is so stunning we serve it to guests.
2. Coconut Curry Butternut Squash Soup
Got a big butternut squash and a sharp knife? Good thing you can make this beatific coconut curry butternut squash soup with just those two ingredients and a clutch of pantry staples. I mean, just look at it: sunshine in a bowl. The base is sautéed shallots, ginger and garlic, which you build on with broth and squash. Swirl in a gorgeous little Thai curry paste-coconut combo, and you are, in fact, golden.
3. Parsnip Soup With Air-Fried Apples
This little number relies upon our Philips Soup Maker, which can have soup in your paws in half an hour. If you haven’t spun creamy parsnips into soup form yet, consider doing so this week. The results are incredible. This parsnip soup features air-fried apples, but you can skip those if you don’t have one of our air fryers yet.
4. Cauliflower-Kale Soup with Crispy Kale Topping
This creamy soup begins with a mix of sautéed onion, celery and cauliflower—the perfect antidote to the mild bitterness which comes with the addition of kale. A crumbling of roasted kale chips and toasted pine nuts on top adds a nutty punch to the soup’s mellow flavor.
5. Carrot and Turmeric Soup with Za’atar Yogurt
Another for the “looks hard but isn’t” category of cooking: carrot and turmeric soup. Think about how often you have so many carrots kicking around the fridge. Maybe they’re baby carrots; maybe they’re fresh from the farmers’ market. No matter their heritage, they’re gonna taste amazing once you roast them with staple buddies onion and garlic, throw them in a high-powered blender, and spoon za’atar and orange zest-spiked yogurt on top.
6. Asian-Style Chicken Soup
This is the time of year when your daydreams and evening reflections populate with phở, the delicate, warming Vietnamese soup. Our Asian-style chicken soup nods to phở, and it’s so much easier to riff on that classic than you’d think. If you have a bottle of hoisin, fish sauce, star anise and bok choy, the rest is basically pantry staple central. (And if you don’t, you’ll certainly be keeping those things around from here on out!)
7. Carrot Soup with Sumac-Roasted Chickpeas and Harissa
OK, yes, the ingredient list is a little longer than you want to see, but stick with us! This carrot soup requires little more than sumac, harissa and a single leek in order to earn its spot in soupy rotation. You can riff on the recipe we built around our Cuisinart Cooking Food Processor, which allows you to do all the chopping and cooking in a single vessel, or you can go ahead and treat yourself! We all need soup.