Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup

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Need a simple but exceptionally tasty soup? Then this 5-ingredient wonder is sure to please your palate! It makes a great meal on a chilly day — and it’s fabulous on any day of the year. Roasted cauliflower and garlic combine into a mellow and flavorful combo that is something special. The flavors are tied together with cream, making the soup rich and super-satisfying.

How to make the Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup

When you roast the cauliflower, be sure to roast it until it’s completely soft. If it seems to turn too brown or burn, use a lower temperature. And when making the soup, if you notice that your cauliflower is not completely soft anyway, don’t despair: just cook the mixture of the cauliflower, broth, and cream, until the cauliflower is completely tender and then puree the soup.

I’ve made this soup intentionally very thick – just because I love my soups super-thick. However, you can easily adjust the consistency by adding more bone broth (or chicken stock) until you reach the desired consistency. So, after you’ve pureed the soup, feel free to add more liquid to make it thinner. By the way, making the soup thinner also reduces the carb count!

But let’s take a look at how to prepare this tasty soup.

First, take a large cauliflower head.

Cut it into chunks.

Here we go.

And here.

Like this.

Transfer the cauliflower chunks into a large bowl.

Add 2 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil.

Toss well…

…until the cauliflower is completely covered with the olive oil.

Transfer the cauliflower chunks onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet into a single layer so that the cauliflower chunks are barely touching each other.

Add one whole — yes, one whole! — garlic bulb to the baking sheet as well.

Roast the cauliflower and the garlic at 400 °F (200 °C) for 30-40 minutes, or until the cauliflower is completely soft and tender.

Roasted.

Looks good!

Transfer the roasted cauliflower into a large saucepan. (You can grab from the corners of the parchment paper and then just pour the cauliflower to the saucepan; see the video for the actual method).

Let the garlic bulb cool until you can handle it. Then, cut off the top of the garlic…

…like this.

Now, squeeze the soft contents of the garlic bulb — the interior of the cloves, that is — to the saucepan with the cauliflower.

Add 1 1/2 cups (350 ml) bone broth or chicken stock.

Add also 1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream.

Heat, covered, over high heat, mixing once in a while…

…until boiling. You don’t really need to boil the soup at this point anymore, so just remove the saucepan from the heat when the soup has reached the boiling point.

Then, puree with an immersion blender or in a regular blender (be super-careful with the hot soup!)…

…until smooth and velvety.

Season with salt if your bone broth or chicken stock didn’t contain enough salt. Well, you can naturally add some pepper as well. And now it’s a good point to add more (hot!) bone broth or chicken stock if you prefer your soup thinner.

Serve immediately.

Enjoy!

How I came up with this soup recipe

I love to make pureed soup from cauliflower. This curried soup is my favorite variation — it’s simple, and when you use frozen cauliflower, it’s damn easy as well. Also, this bacony cauliflower soup that uses cream cheese is something I make often.

However, making soup with roasted cauliflower has been on my to-do list for long. Roasting brings out the best from cauliflower — the taste will be full-bodied and slightly nutty. I think I haven’t really made soup with roasted cauliflower before, so now it was time to conduct some experiments.

When I was pondering which seasonings to use, I first thought to add thyme or simply onion powder — my all-time favorite natural flavor enhancer — but then realized garlic would be the best option for this soup. And not just any garlic: I thought roasted garlic was the ultimate seasoning to accompany the roasted cauliflower. And what was the best, I could roast the garlic at the same time with the cauliflower.

As I knew garlic will get really mild and mellow when roasted, I opted for adding the whole bulb. That should lend a notable but still mild flavor of garlic.

And since I love creamy soups, I decided to add an ample amount of heavy cream. But as I didn’t want to use only heavy cream as fluid, I chose to use some bone broth in addition. Bone broth is an exceptional health food — I often use this bone broth powder made from reindeer bones — and sometimes I prepare bone broth myself. Always, when making bone broth, remember to use bones from organic, wild, or pasture-raised animals. Bones tend to gather some nasty stuff — like glyphosate — and that you definitely don’t want into your system.

But, it was time to conduct my first experiment. I took one large cauliflower head and chopped it into chunks. I transferred the chunks into a large bowl and added olive oil (because you basically need to cover the cauliflower with olive oil if you want to make perfect roasted cauliflower). At first, I was planning to use only one tablespoon of olive oil but then decided to add two. The cauliflower indeed needed two tablespoons of olive oil to be properly coated with the oil.

Next, I laid the cauliflower chunks onto a parchment paper-lined baking sheet and also added one garlic bulb. I was a bit excited if the garlic roasts until soft with the cauliflower — or if it needs longer roasting time. Well, that was to be seen.

I roasted the cauliflower until soft. Well, to be honest, in my first experiment, it wasn’t completely soft when I had roasted it (in my partially-broken oven) for 30 minutes. So, lesson learned, in my next experiments, I roasted it for 40 minutes.

I transferred the roasted cauliflower into a saucepan. Now, I had to think about how to get the garlic cloves out of the bulb. Thinking of cutting the cloves open one by one sounded too laborious, so I decided to cut off the top of the garlic and then just try to squeeze out the soft contents.

To my big surprise, it worked, and I got very neatly squeezed out all the delicious, soft interior from the garlic bulb. Nice!

In addition to the roasted garlic, I added 1 cup (240 ml) bone broth and 1 cup (240 ml) heavy cream to the saucepan. As the cauliflower and garlic were already beautifully roasted and tender, I thought I don’t really need to cook the ingredients, just heat them until boiling and then puree them with an immersion blender.

When the soup had reached the boiling point, I removed the saucepan from the heat and pureed the soup. It was really thick — almost like mashed cauliflower — but as I wanted it to be soup rather than mashed cauliflower, I added some more bone broth.

Now, the consistency was just perfect — still quite thick but spoonable. After adding a teaspoon of natural salt, the taste was impeccable as well: deliciously roasted, almost nutty flavor, accompanied with mellow, toasty garlic that really amped up the flavors. It was a good decision to use the whole garlic bulb – it lent enough flavor, but it wasn’t overpowering. And the taste of the roasted garlic was excellent – compared to the more aggressive flavor of unroasted garlic.

I was surprised that the soup turned out so well with just these simple ingredients. But after all, you really cannot go wrong with real ingredients: the result just has to be delicious!

Here’s the recipe for you to enjoy:

Nutrition information	In total	Per serving if 6 servings in total
Protein	40.7 g	6.8 g
Fat	113.6 g	18.9 g
Net carbs	31.4 g	5.2 g
kcal	1354 kcal	226 kcal

 

How to get some variation to the Roasted Cauliflower and Garlic Soup recipe

Actually, this is not a soup variation — but a fabulous way to make a twist to your ordinary mashed cauliflower: use only 1/2 cup (120 ml) of bone broth when preparing. You’ll get nice, thick, and super-tasty mashed cauliflower!

For a dairy-free variation, replace the heavy cream with coconut cream or with a combination of coconut milk or almond milk and a little bit (about 1/4 cup = 60 ml) of coconut manna.

I didn’t want to mess up with additional flavors, as I love simple and pure flavors of roasted cauliflower and roasted garlic. There is nothing smashing in mixing dozens of flavors together. Keep it simple! However, if you want to add some more seasonings to this soup, add herbs like thyme or rosemary. For more kick, use cajun seasoning or chipotle. Or make it the best to your palate and simply use your favorite spices!

For serving, top the soup with crumbled fried bacon, grated Parmesan – or as my German mother-in-law serves her soups: with sliced salami on the side.

General prattling

This has once again been a hectic week, but it was exceptional in the way that I was completely alone at home. My husband was in Bulgaria for a work trip, and my son was spending his one-week winter holiday with my parents. So, I had the whole week for myself — or actually for work. And boy, did I work!

I was in Helsinki for two days. First, we were designing our Ketokamu websites, and on Thursday, I had three and a half meetings (that half was a telco). I also made a fascinating contract with my publisher. Unfortunately, I cannot reveal too much yet but will keep you updated when things finally start to happen.

And that’s not all, on Sunday (the day this post goes live) I’ll organize my son’s 9th birthday party. Unfortunately, I won’t manage to post the photos of the actual party here, but I promise I’ll post them in my next week’s post. Actually, some of those photos I’m going to use for my upcoming Finnish book about the keto diet for the whole family. Well, I was preparing my famous 2-ingredient crackers, so from those, I managed to take this photo:

Oh yes, I’m happy to be part of the Low Carb Universe event in Mallorca in November. There are also other remarkable speakers, like Maria and Craig Emmerich. Feel free to join us in the beautiful Mallorca and exciting program!