I was excited to discover this Vitamix soup recipe because it does not have any extra cooking, which makes it super easy. You can even get away with not chopping any of the vegetables. Just put the ingredients in the container, and blend until they get hot. It’s perfect if you’re feeling lazy or want to round out a dinner in a hurry. (Many Vitamix soups taste best if you steam, roast, or sauté some of the ingredients before blending, but this one actually benefits from the fresh taste of uncooked ingredients.)
It’s a demonstration recipe that I found on Raw Blends. Interestingly, Vitamix’s Austalia and UK web sites have a version of it, but their US and Canada sites do not. I’m not sure why, since I know plenty of Americans who love Thai food. The analogous demonstration recipe here is Tortilla/Southwest soup, which also does not require extra cooking. It’s nice to have this completely different tasting recipe in the rotation. The flavor is surprisingly Thai-like, without requiring any exotic ingredients.
Vitamix CEO Jodi Berg likes to mention that a secret ingredient for Vitamix soup is raw apple. The Vitamix fully purees and heats it, but does not cook it, so it infuses the soup with raw apple flavor in a way that you wouldn’t get in traditionally cooked soups. The same thing happens with other ingredients, but I agree with Jodi that the apple flavor is particularly noteworthy.
Ingredients
1 carrot (~80g)
1 stalk celery (~80g)
1/2 small bell pepper (~80g)
small yellow squash or zucchini (~80g)
~1″ piece of ginger (~10g)
1 green onion
1 slice lemon w/ skin (~25g)
1 clove garlic w/ skin
~1″ piece of hot pepper (~5g)
handful of cilantro (~10g)
half green apple (granny smith, ~100g)
3/4 cup raw cashews (~100g)
1 tsp Better than Bouillon (or bouillon cube)
2 cups water
ground pepper
Makes ~4 cups of soup; 2–4 servings.
The only ingredient I cut into pieces is the ginger. It can have fibers that the blender doesn’t cut, so I like to cut it into ~1/8″ thick rounds. If you don’t want it super spicy, you should probably remove some of the seeds of the hot pepper. A few go a long way, because they get fully pulverized in the Vitamix.
If you start with cold water, you can blend everything on high for ~6 minutes, until it is steaming hot. I prefer to heat the water in a kettle while I’m washing the vegetables. Then you can blend it for ~90 seconds on high, saving time and noise. If you ramp up the speed gradually, you probably won’t need the tamper, especially if you have a wide container.
Garnish
I like the way the chopped cilantro garnish looks, but I wasn’t that into it for eating with the smooth soup. It interrupted the smoothness, without providing something satisfying to chew. I think it would work better on a chunky soup. So you could keep it simple with just the ground pepper, or maybe add some cashew pieces.
Substitutions/Additions
The original recipe also calls for 100g of cabbage, but that is a tiny portion of a head. So, I think cabbage is only worth getting if you want to use it for other things. (Perhaps coleslaw?)
I bet this would also be good with coconut milk instead of the cashews.
You don’t necessarily need each of the first four vegetables. If you have an aversion to one of them, or if you just don’t have it on hand, I think the soup would still come out well. As a demonstration recipe, part of its design is to impress people with the variety of vegetables, and you don’t necessarily need that at home.
If you don’t want a totally smooth soup, I think some shredded cabbage would add interesting texture, or you could add something more substantial like baked tofu. You could add either one after blending the soup and then pulse at medium speed to maintain texture.
Leftovers
I tested to see what it was like after leaving some in the fridge for a day. It was fine, but it lost a lot of its fresh flavor, so I’d recommend eating it right away.
About the skin/peel
Normally I would take garlic out of its skin, but it turns out that the skin is completely undetectable in the finished blended soup. Ginger peel also blends to oblivion. I normally don’t blend lemon peel, but this tastes good with it. I think the peel may add to the Thai-style flavor in this recipe by approximating lemongrass.
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