This Wild Garlic Soup is simple to make and absolutely delicious. Every year, when Wild Garlic season comes about, we go out as a family to pick as much as we can, our 3 year old loves helping out. We make a big batch of it and to eat whilst freshly made, anything leftover we store in the freezer. It doesn't matter how much we make though, it's never enough.
We love the Springtime. Longer days and warmer weather. For us it means we get to spend more time out in nature with the children. Exploring and showing them all of the wonderful things there are to see, do and eat!
It's the start of our foraging season as well. We love spending time finding and picking seasonal produce. Whether it be Wild Garlic, Horseradish, or the various wild mushrooms, fruits, berries and nuts that we collect as the year progresses.
We love Wild Garlic and it's a wonderfully versatile ingredient to work with. We love having it in salads, tossed through pasta dishes, in a pesto, such as our Walnut & Wild Garlic Pesto or our Wild Garlic Pesto with Pine Nuts. It's one of those ingredients that in some form or another goes with so many things.
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What You'll Need
Ingredients
- Cashews - Widely available in supermarkets and local grocery stores. If you prefer to buy in bulk like we do, most wholefoods retailers sell them online. We blend them raw due to having a Vitamix, however, you can pre-soak your cashews if you don't have a high-speed blender. Do this by adding cashews to a bowl and covering with lukewarm water and leaving to soak for 4-8 hours.
- Garlic - We like to use extra Garlic in our Wild Garlic Soup because we firmly believe you can never have too much. To mix this up a little you could try using smoked garlic if your local store stocks this.
- Potato - We use Maris Piper, but any white Potato will work in the recipe. Some supermarkets sell a cheap 'all rounder' Potato that we've used before and it was just as tasty.
- Shallots - We use banana Shallots in our recipe which are widely available. If you can't find these in your local shop however, the smaller round shallots will work fine.
- Thyme - As always, fresh is best. If you only have access to dried Thyme sub the 1 cup of fresh for 1tbsp dried.
- Vegan Butter - If you don't typically use butter alternatives, any neutral flavour oil can be used, such as olive, avocado or rapeseed. If you want to make this an oil free recipe, you can de-glaze your pan with a little water instead.
- Vegetable Stock - For personal preference I like to use Kallo stock cubes, but any other store bought or home made stock is fine. It's worth noting that using different stock cubes will create a slightly different end result so best to use one you know you like.
- Wild Garlic - You want fresh, washed, unblemished leaves. You will also need to check the underside of the leaves for any fungus that may have grown on the forest floor, being sure to discard the ones that do.
Equipment
- High Speed Blender (or hand held)
- Saucepan (large)
- Sharp Knife
How to Make
- Step 1: Sweat off the Shallots and the Cloves of Garlic on a medium-low heat.
- Step 2: Add the diced Potato.
- Steps 3 & 4: Stir through, add the chopped Thyme and stir again. Cook until the Thyme becomes fragrant and the potatoes begin to soften.
- Step 5: Add the boiling water to the pan then cover and simmer. Leave to cook for 10 minutes.
- Step 6: Roughly chop the Wild Garlic and add it to the pan, then replace the lid and return to a simmer.
- Leave the Wild Garlic soup ingredients in the pan to cool down to room temperature. Add to your high speed blender once cooled and blend until smooth. If you wish to eat it as soon as it is cooked though then you can blend it in the saucepan whilst hot, using an electric hand blender instead.
- Warm the Soup through again in the pan, after blending it.
- Add ⅔ of the Cashew Cream to the blended soup and stir through. Use the remaining for serving.
Storage
The soup will keep for up to 5 days in an airtight container in the fridge.
You can also store it in the freezer for up to 3 months. We store it in a few family serving size bags so that we just defrost one meal for the family at a time. Instead of freezing the batch in one container.
Recipe Tips
By leaving the un-blended soup to cool, and then transferring to a high speed blender such as a Vitamix or Ninja, the result is a much silkier soup than if blended in the saucepan using a hand blender. It doesn't need to be cold to be transferred, just cooled enough to be safe. We leave ours to cool down for about 10 minutes or so before transferring to the blender. Also be sure not to overfill your blender, its fine not to be able to blend all the soup in one go.
Just remember, when all the soup is blended, to return all of it to a saucepan and stir it together again so as to make sure that the flavour is consistent through the whole batch.
FAQ's
Yes you can freeze in soup storage bags or an airtight container for up to 3 months.
In the UK Wild Garlic starts to grows in woodlands and forests at the end of winter and through all of Spring. The leaves of Wild Garlic can usually be picked March to June. They are at their best and most flavoursome when bright green before the flowers open.
We started picking ours this year in April.
The leaves, stems, bulbs and flowers - ie all of it. We use fresh flowers to garnish soups and salads. We pickle garlic bulbs and add them to salads as well (unless you're Steve and eat them straight out of the jar from the fridge). The stalks get added with the leaves in recipes like this soup, our pesto's and any salad we add them to.
Before flowering, Wild Garlic looks like this (Photo credit - Pascal Debrunner): 
Other Wild Garlic Recipe Ideas
Here are some more of our Delicious recipes with Wild Garlic for you to try.
Recipe
Wild Garlic Soup
Equipment
- High Speed Blender (or hand held)
- Saucepan (large)
- Sharp Knife
Ingredients
Wild Garlic Soup
- ⅛ cup Vegan Butter
- 4 Cloves Garlic
- 4 Shallots we used Banana/Echalion Shallots
- 2 Medium White Potatoes
- 1 Lemon all the Zest and ½ the Juice
- ½ cup Chopped Fresh Thyme This is about a handful when unchopped
- 3 Vegetable Stock Cubes
- 2.5 cups Washed and Drained Wild Garlic Buds or Flowers as well as Leaves is fine
- ½ teaspoon Black Pepper
- ½ teaspoon Salt (Optional)
- 1.5 litre Boiling Water
Cashew Cream
- ½ cup Raw Cashew Nuts
- 150 ml Water
Instructions
- Put the Saucepan on a medium heat and add the Vegan Butter to the pan.⅛ cup Vegan Butter
- Peel & roughly chop the Shallots & the Garlic cloves ands add them to the pan and stir together. Then stir every 30 seconds or so to prevent burning. This needs a few minutes like this for the shallots and garlic to sweat down and soften nicely.4 Cloves Garlic, 4 Shallots
- Whilst the shallots and Garlic cloves are sweating down, Peel & Roughly chop the Potatoes, into about 1cm cubes. Then add to the pan once the Shallots are translucent.2 Medium White Potatoes
- Chop the Thyme and add to the pan, then stir.½ cup Chopped Fresh Thyme
- Fill the kettle to 1.5 litres and then boil. Then add the boiling water to the pan.1.5 litre Boiling Water
- Add the Salt and Pepper to the saucepan. The amounts I have put are personal preference, seasoning is optional though.½ teaspoon Salt, ½ teaspoon Black Pepper
- Crumble in the Stock cubes and stir.3 Vegetable Stock Cubes
- Add the zest of a Lemon.1 Lemon
- Add the juice of ½ a Lemon.
- Put a lid on the pan and simmer for 10 minutes.
- Roughly Chop the Wild Garlic and then add it to the pan (once it has been simmering for 10 minutes) then put the lid back on and simmer for another 2 minutes, before taking off of the heat and removing the lid.2.5 cups Washed and Drained Wild Garlic
- If using a hand blender then this can be done in the saucepan straight away, whilst the soup is hot. NB: If making a batch to be reheated later, you can blend in a normal blender or a food processor but make sure to wait until the soup ingredients have cooled to room temperature before transferring to the blender that you are using.
- Put the Raw Cashew Nuts and 150ml of cold water into a high speed blender and blend until a smooth, 'single cream' consistency Cashew Cream.½ cup Raw Cashew Nuts, 150 ml Water
- Pour ⅔ of the Cashew Cream into the soup and stir through. Pour the remainder of the Cashew Cream into a jug to be used to add a swirl to the bowls when served.
- Serve: Ladle out into bowls, add a swirl of Cashew Cream to each and enjoy.
sue
Delicious and easy to make. We've tried a few different wild garlic soup recipes and this is our favourite so far.
Yasmin
Thank you Sue, we're glad that you're enjoying this recipe as much we do.Have you tried the Wild Garlic Pesto yet?
Gemma
Easy to make and tastes great. I made the wild garlic pesto at the same time and love both of these recipes.