Vegan Roasted Cauliflower Soup (2024)

This 6-ingredient vegan roasted cauliflower soup is rich, creamy and without dairy! Roasted cauliflower is another level of delicious and when you treat simple and cheap ingredients right, you get the best vegan cauliflower soup recipe you’ve ever tasted!

I love me some creamy vegan soups! One of the first recipes I published on the blog is this vegan potato leek soup. That was waaay back when I could still afford to buy cashews.

I now have two new favourite ingredients for adding creaminess to my vegan soups and sauces. The first is unsweetened soy yogurt, which is amazing in this vegan ranch dip, and the second is coconut milk.

A while back I reviewed a cookbook that had a recipe for vegan alfredo sauce. The sauce is made from cauliflower and either cashews or coconut milk. I opted for the coconut milk and was surprised that it didn’t taste at all like coconut. So I decided to expand on that idea and make this epic and flavour-packed vegan roasted cauliflower soup!

How to make vegan roasted cauliflower soup

Instead of justsimmering the cauliflower like most vegan cauliflower soup recipes do, I wantedto really bring out the sweetness of the cauliflower by roasting it first.

Roasting vegetablesoften takes 45 minutes but there are two tricks I use to make this soup quickto prepare and great for a weekday dinner.

First, you don’t needto wait for your oven to fully preheat before putting the pan in. It reallydoesn’t make a difference if vegetables start roasting in a cooler oven, theycome out fully roasted in the end.

So simply cut the coreout of the cauliflower, pull or cut the florets into smaller pieces, drizzleover some olive oil and salt and throw that pan in the oven.

Secondly, I roast thecauliflower at a rather high temperature in order to get it finished sooner. Don’tworry, it still comes out tender, sweet and with delicious roasted flavour,even a bit smoky as the small bits will char a little and add even morecomplexity to the soup.

(Aside: have you everhad a whole cauliflower roasted in a wood-burning oven until nearly charred? Ihad it at an Israeli restaurant and it was one of the most delicious things I’veever put in my mouth).

Just keep an eye on itto ensure that you don’t burn it too much!

While the caulifloweris roasting, you can fry the onion. Another trick to squeezing out as muchflavour as possible is to slow cook the onion over low heat.

Normally you cookonions in about 5 minutes but since you have time to spare while the cauliflowerroasts, you can slowly soften the onion for 10 - 15 minutes.

Slow cooked onions add a great deal of complexity and richness to the soup. It’s not just me who thinks so, this article from Cook’s Illustrated explains the science behind why it’s always best to slow cook your onions when making soups and sauces!

When everything isjust about ready, add your favourite fresh or dried herb. I chose dried thymebut you can experiment with whatever herb or even a pinch of nutmeg or currypowder.

Add some vegetablestock and bring it up to the boil. Now you have two options for blending:either transfer the pot and cauliflower to a blender or toss the cauliflowerinto the pot and use a stick blender.

Personally, my uprightblender makes smoother soups than my stick blender so I prefer that option. Beginblending, carefully and with the lid cracked to allow steam to escape, and whenit’s mostly broken down pour in the coconut milk.

I prefer to add thecoconut milk to the blender rather than heating it in the pot with the stock becauseit can sometimes split or get weird when it’s boiled. It shouldn’t cool downyour soup too much when adding it but if it does you can always transfer thecontents back to your pot and heat for another minute or two.

That’s it! Taste andadjust the seasonings as you see fit and serve. You can use the leftovercoconut milk as a garnish drizzled over and whatever other garnishes you like.I especially love this vegan roasted cauliflower soup served with lots ofcrusty bread on the side for dipping!