The Best Cauliflower Soup Recipe For Your Soup Maker (Rich, Creamy, And Properly Filling)

I've made a lot of cauliflower soup over the years. Some versions were watery, some were fine but forgettable, and some I genuinely looked forward to eating again. This is now the only recipe I go to for a cauliflower soup. It's still August right now at the time of writing this but it's an amazing soup to have just before Autumn begins. Trust me.

It's made entirely in a soup maker, which means minimal washing up and no standing over a hob stirring. If you've got one sitting on your worktop and you're not using it weekly, this recipe will change that. Seriously, my auntie keeps asking me for the recipe when she forgets it (LOL), it's really good, I promise.

What you'll need

1 head of cauliflower

1 onion

1 small potato

1 celery stick

1 heaped tablespoon of butter

300ml of double cream

1 Knorr chicken or vegetable stock pot

1 egg

Hot water to the fill line on your soup maker

That's it. Eight ingredients plus water. The potato adds body without you tasting it separately.

The celery adds a faint savouriness that rounds out the cauliflower without dominating. The egg, which I'll get to, is the bit that makes this soup noticeably different from anything you've had from a tin or a supermarket chiller cabinet.

A note on the stock: I use a Knorr stock pot because the jelly-format dissolves cleanly into the hot liquid without leaving clumps, and the flavour is consistent.

Chicken stock gives a slightly richer result. Vegetable stock works perfectly well if you want to keep it vegetarian, like me.

How to make it

This is the full method, step by step.

1. Chop the cauliflower into florets and break them into roughly even pieces so they cook at the same rate.

2. Dice the onion and the potato. The potato doesn't need to be tiny, just even.

3. Cut the celery stick into a few pieces.

4. Add everything except the egg and cream, including the butter and the stock pot, into the soup maker.

5. Fill with hot water to the fill line marked on your machine. Don't go over it, on most Morphy Richards models, overfilling triggers an error and cuts power to the blade.

6. Set to the smooth or blended soup setting and let it run.

7. Once the cycle finishes, beat the egg in a small bowl, then slowly ladle a few spoonfuls of the hot soup into the egg while whisking. This warms the egg gradually so it doesn't scramble when it hits the rest of the soup.

8. Pour the egg mixture back into the soup maker and run the blend cycle one more time so it incorporates fully.

9. Add the cream and blend once more until everything is combined.

The egg step is the one people skip. It sounds strange. But what it does is add a thickness and richness that cream alone doesn't produce.

The tempering step, warming the egg with a little hot soup before it goes in, is worth doing properly; skip it and you risk ending up with flecks of cooked egg rather than a smooth result.

You won't taste the egg separately.

A few things worth knowing

Don't add the cream before the egg cycle. If you add the cream first and then blend again, you risk over-processing it and the texture can turn slightly grainy. Egg first, blend, then cream, blend. That order matters.

The potato does the thickening work alongside the egg, which means you don't need flour or cornflour or anything else. It keeps the ingredient list clean and the flavour doesn't have that slightly starchy edge you sometimes get with thickened soups.

Fill lines vary between machines. If you overfill, the blender may cut out mid-cycle. Don't overfill.

If your cauliflower head is on the smaller side, the soup will still work but it'll be thinner.

You can compensate by using a slightly larger potato or by running the second blend cycle a bit longer.

Serving it

This is a substantial soup. With bread it's a full lunch or a light dinner. On its own it's a starter, though a generous one.

It keeps well in the fridge for three days. Reheat it on the hob over a low heat and stir it as it warms through. Don't boil it after the cream is in or the texture can split.

It also freezes well, though I'd recommend freezing it before the cream goes in if you're planning ahead. Add the cream when you reheat from frozen and it'll be just as good.

A swirl of cream on top before serving looks good. A few chives if you've got them. Black pepper. Nothing more is needed.

Is it actually the best cauliflower soup?

I know "best" is a bold claim to put in a title, and I usually find those titles annoying. But I've made this enough times, and had enough people ask for the recipe after eating it, that I'm comfortable with it.

The received wisdom with cauliflower soup is that you need to roast the cauliflower first to get any depth of flavour. I don't think that's true. Roasting adds a nuttiness that's nice, but it's also an extra step, an extra roasting tray, and an extra twenty minutes.

This soup maker version skips all of that and still produces something with real flavour, because the stock pot, the butter, and the time in the machine do enough work without the oven.

If you want to roast first, go ahead. But I'd make this version as written at least once before you start adding steps.

The recipe at a glance

1 head of cauliflower, cut into florets

1 onion, diced

1 small potato, diced

1 celery stick, roughly chopped

1 heaped tablespoon of butter

1 Knorr chicken or vegetable stock pot

Hot water to the fill line

1 egg, tempered and added after the first blend cycle

300ml double cream, added after the egg is blended in

Add everything except the egg and cream to the soup maker, fill to the line, and run the smooth cycle.

Beat the egg, temper it with a few ladles of hot soup, then pour the mixture back in and blend again. Add the cream and blend once more. Season and serve.

You won't regret making it!