Three years ago today, I posted not only my very first potato soup recipe, but it was also my very first Vegan MoFo post ever ever ever. I had only been blogging for merely a few weeks at that time, so I was not only a newbie MoFoer, I was also a newbie blogger. Ah, how time does fly. Now, I am all old and weathered and some would even argue —more mature–but I’m still kickin’!
Vegan MoFo has begun once again and here I am back in the saddle and ready to ride the MoFo horse again. I may be a little more experienced, yes, but I am every bit as excited (if not more) than I was back in the day. Now that my second book is mostly wrapped up (and available for pre-sale now on Amazon!), I have the whole month to dedicate to creating and sharing new recipes… and I am pumped.
Since this is my third Vegan MoFo, I figured it would be a fun nod to the past by posting another recipe for potato soup. This is a slightly more refined version of the one that launched my MoFo’ing off 3 years ago: Cream Cheese Potato Soup. It’s modeled off of a potato soup from the fast food joint Panera Bread– which I used to enjoy in my pre-vegan days of youth.
This soup is creamy and cheesey and extremely easy to pull together–providing you have a couple cups of raw cashews already soaked and ready to go. If not, just toss ’em in a bowl, top with enough water to cover, and then wait a couple hours. After that, it’s just some boiling, smashing, a little pureeing and voila! Instant comfort food.
In a large stock pot, combine the broth with the potatoes, garlic, onion, and rosemary sprig and bring to a boil over high heat. Once boiling, reduce to medium heat and let simmer for 30 minutes, or until potatoes and onions are extremely well cooked.
In the meantime, combine the soaked cashews and the 3/4 cup water in a food processor and blend for about 8 minutes, or until very creamy, scraping down the sides as needed.
Remove the rosemary sprig from the cooked potato mixture and then using a potato masher, carefully mash up about 1/2 of the cooked potatoes inside the pot. Whisk in the nutritional yeast and the cashew cream until blended and add in the sea salt. Garnish with chopped scallions and black pepper before serving.
I just made this and I absolutely love it! So does the hubby!!
Your food styling and photography is simply superb. And since I have all the ingredients for this, I might just have to give it a whirl tonight.
Can’t wait to make this. It looks amazing!
Using soaked cashews to encreamify a soup is such a great plan. Plus, who doesn’t want some extra protein in their soup?
Oh this looks really good! I’m so happy it doesn’t call for store bought vegan cream cheese!
I use to love that soup too! This probably has twice the nutritional value of that junk though. Now I just need to make a bread bowl!
oooh, bread bowl—man, I haven’t thought about one of those in years… great idea!
This soup sounds so tasty!! Awesome idea!
Ooh, this sounds rich & delicious. It’s going on my menu for next week.
Beautiful! I love the photo, it’s absolutely stunning!
aw, thank you so much, Kelly!