My Favourite Courgette, Potato and Cheddar Soup (Soup Maker Recipe, No Flour)

Courgette, potato and cheddar soup sounds almost too simple to be worth writing down, and honestly that's the point. It's cheap, it's filling, and it tastes far richer than the short ingredient list has any right to. The cheddar makes it feel like a treat. The potato makes it stick to your ribs. And the courgette quietly does the bulk of the work without shouting about it.

Best of all, the whole thing goes into the soup maker. No standing over a pan stirring, no stick blender splattering the walls. You chop, you fill, you click smooth, and twenty-odd minutes later it blends itself into something properly silky.

Why there's no flour in this one

A lot of cheese soups lean on flour to thicken them up. This one doesn't need it. The potato does the whole job on its own. As it cooks down it breaks apart and gives you that thick, velvety texture without a spoonful of flour anywhere near it.

So if you're avoiding flour, or you just never seem to have any in the cupboard, you're sorted. It also keeps the courgette potato and cheddar soup naturally gluten free, as long as your stock is too. Always worth a quick check of the stock cube.

Courgette, Potato and Cheddar Soup Ingredients (serves 4)

• 1 tbsp butter or a glug of olive oil

• 1 onion, chopped

• 1 garlic clove, chopped

• 2 medium courgettes (about 400g), chopped

• 2 medium potatoes (about 300g), peeled and chopped small

• 800ml hot vegetable stock, or up to the max line of your soup maker

• 100g mature cheddar, grated

• 1 tsp Dijon mustard, or a pinch of mustard powder (optional, but it lifts the cheese no end)

• Salt and pepper

• A little grated nutmeg, if you like it

Chop the potato smaller than you think you need to. It cooks quicker and blends smoother that way.

How to make it in the soup maker

If your soup maker has a sauté setting, melt the butter and soften the onion and garlic for a few minutes first. It builds a bit more flavour into the base. If yours doesn't sauté, don't fret about it, just bung everything in raw. It still comes out lovely.

Add the courgette and potato to the jug. Pour in the hot stock up to the max line, and not a drop over, or it'll spit at you through the lid halfway through.

Pop the lid on and press the smooth setting. Mine runs for about twenty-one minutes. Go and do something else while it gets on with it.

When it beeps, lift the lid off carefully, because the steam coming off it is fierce. Tip in the grated cheddar and the mustard if you're using it, and stir it all through so the cheese melts down into the hot soup.

Then the good bit. We click blend for a few seconds on top of the smooth cycle, and that's what turns it from nice soup into proper silky, velvety soup. The soup maker I use does this beautifully, the blend function gets it smoother than I ever managed faffing about with a stick blender.

Taste it, add salt and pepper to your liking, and that's your dinner sorted.

Tips for the silkiest soup

Use mature cheddar, not mild. You want that proper sharp flavour, because once it's spread through a whole pot of soup it mellows right out. Mild cheddar tends to end up tasting of not very much at all.

Add the cheese at the end, not the start. If it cooks through the full cycle it can go a bit grainy or stringy on you. Stirring it in at the end and giving it that quick blend is what keeps everything smooth.

Don't overfill the jug. The max line is there for a reason, and courgettes give off a surprising amount of water as they cook, so you've got more liquid in there than you'd think.

Ways to change it up

Fancy it a bit different? A handful of fresh thyme or a few chopped chives stirred in at the end is lovely. A pinch of chilli flakes wakes the whole thing right up if you like a bit of heat.

And if you want it even more filling, a third potato won't hurt, just keep half an eye on that max line.

To make it dairy free, swap the butter for oil and use a dairy free cheese, or leave the cheese out altogether and finish with a swirl of coconut cream instead. It's a slightly different soup at that point, but a good one in its own right.

Storing and freezing

It keeps in the fridge for three days in a tub, and it actually tastes better the next day once the flavours have had a chance to settle.

It freezes well too, though cheese soups can go a touch grainy once defrosted, so give it a good stir and a gentle reheat and it pulls back together fine. I freeze mine in single portions for the days I can't be bothered to cook from scratch.

The soup maker I use

I get asked about this constantly, so here it is. The soup maker I use and would genuinely recommend is right here on Amazon. It's the smooth and blend function that sold me on it.

You're not stuck fishing about with a separate blender or hoping a stick blender does the job, you press one button and it sorts the texture for you. For something I'm using two or three times a week all through the colder months, it's well and truly earned its place on the worktop.

A quick note on affiliate links

Some of the links in this post are affiliate links. That means if you buy through one of them, I might earn a small commission, at no extra cost to you whatsoever. I only ever link to things I actually use and would recommend anyway, the soup maker included. It helps keep the blog going, and I'm grateful to anyone who shops through them.