Skip to main content
  1. Home
  2. Food & Drink

My clever hack makes any creamy soup recipe dairy-free (without sacrificing flavor)

Just because you're vegan or lactose intolerant doesn't mean you should miss out on the season's best soups

Lindsay Parrill
By
Broccoli soup
Saramukitza / Pixabay

The winter season is a favorite of many due to its festive cheer, twinkling lights, and the general spirit of loving merriment and goodwill. For us, it’s the soup. Deliciously warm and comforting winter soups are special in their ability to cheer, nourish, and warm both body and soul.

This time of year, we can’t get enough of our soup recipes. But as much as we adore these soups in all their cozy, velvety glory, they’re often thickened and flavored with lactose-laden cream and butter, sour creams, and cheeses. While these dairy ingredients do add tremendous flavor and depth to creamy soups, like what you’ll find in your potato soup recipe, they certainly aren’t for everyone. For a variety of reasons, many people can’t have dairy in their diets, and we’re here to help, at least when it comes to warm, creamy soups. There are actually several delicious ways for the vegan and dairy-intolerant individuals among us to achieve the same thick and creamy soup results with no dairy at all.

Recommended Videos

The secret ingredient to thick and silky dairy-free soups is starch. Depending on the flavors of your soup, you can use a huge variety of starchy ingredients to work as thickening agents in your dish. In fact, if what you’re making is a soup that features a particularly starchy ingredient already, like potatoes, simply add a little more potato and subtract a bit of the liquid for a naturally thick and creamy soup, thickened by the starchiness of the potatoes.

Related

Bread is another one of our favorite options for thickening just about any of your favorites, like cream of broccoli soup, cream of mushroom soup, corn chowder, lobster bisque, and tomato soup. This method is tremendously popular in many European dishes, such as Italian ribollita. Rice and other grains like barley and oatmeal work very well, too. Simply allow them to cook within your soup, then puree with a regular or an immersion blender for a dairy-free soup that tastes just as delicious as the cream and butter version.

Garlic soup
Veronika FitArt / Unsplash

Roasted garlic soup recipe

This roasted garlic soup recipe is beautiful in its simplicity. The sweet, nutty flavor of roasted garlic shines in this delicious dairy-free soup that’s absolutely perfect for winter.

Ingredients

  • 8 cups chicken or vegetable stock
  • 4 tablespoons bacon fat (or vegetable oil)
  • 1 yellow onion, diced
  • 3 heads garlic, roasted (*see tips and tricks)
  • 1/2 cup dry white wine
  • 6-8 slices bread, diced into 1/2-inch pieces
  • Salt and pepper to taste

Method

  1. While the garlic is roasting (see below), heat the bacon fat or oil in a large pan over medium-high heat. Add the onion and saute it until it’s translucent, 2 to 3 minutes.
  2. Add the wine to the pan and cook it until it has nearly evaporated.
  3. Add the stock, roasted garlic, and bread cubes to the onions, stirring to combine.
  4. Bring the soup to a boil, then reduce to a simmer and cook on low-medium for 5 to 10 minutes.
  5. Remove the soup from the heat. Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until it’s velvety smooth.
  6. Season to taste and serve with homemade croutons or any other garnish you desire.

Roasted garlic soup tips and tricks

  • Roasted garlic is a very simple thing to prepare, and it is one of the most delicious ingredients in the world. Roasted garlic is incredible in thousands of dishes, taking on a sweeter, nuttier, smoother garlic taste than that of raw garlic. You can find our simple recipe for roasted garlic here.
  • Bread is a wonderful thickening agent, but it’s also great for adding and adapting flavor to your own personal preferences. You can use just about any kind of bread you like here, and keep in mind the additional flavors it will bring to a dish.

Editors' Recommendations

Topics
Lindsay Parrill
Lindsay Parrill
Contributor
Lindsay is a graduate of California Culinary Academy, Le Cordon Bleu, San Francisco, from where she holds a degree in…
It’s been scientifically proven that pasta makes you happier
It's not your imagination. Pasta actually does make you happier.
Raw spaghetti

Is there anything more beautifully comforting, as intensely satisfying, or as incredibly delicious as a big bowl of your favorite pasta dish? From classic spaghetti and meatballs to creamy fettuccine Alfredo to a late-night pasta carbonara, every plate of pasta just feels like a giant hug. Pasta can be as simple as can be, delectable with only a little browned butter and Pecorino Romano, or intricate and sophisticated, accented with fresh seafood and earthy truffles. It's the perfect pantry staple from which to create a million dishes from a thousand global cuisines, and we can't get enough. According to Share The Pasta, the average American consumes approximately 20 pounds of pasta annually, making it the sixth-highest food per capita in the country. As a nation, we consume almost 6 billion pounds of pasta every year. It's also one of the most universally loved and appreciated foods in existence. I fail to recall a time when I've ever heard someone say, "Pasta? Nah. Not my thing."

Everyone loves pasta because pasta is perfection. And now, at long last, science has confirmed what most of us have known since childhood. That this life-giving ingredient actually makes our brains happier.

Read more
Why you can (and should) add bourbon right to your banana bread batter without cooking it first
Bourbon alcohol cooks out as banana bread bakes - genius!
Banana bread

Cooking with booze is one of the best ways to achieve a robust and delicious complexity of flavor. For any number of dishes, we braise, poach, deglaze, and sauce with everything in the liquor cabinet, from wine to tequila to rum, and our food is better for it. And while you may have incorporated beer into your cupcakes or poached pear in a simmering pool of red wine, you may not yet fully appreciate the flavor spirits can bring to baked goods. Banana bread is one of the most delicious, comforting, feels-like-home treats there is, and it's hard to imagine it getting any better than it already is in its mildly sweet, toasty perfection. Enter bourbon.

It turns out that splashing a bit of bourbon into banana bread batter can take Grandma's recipe and elevate it to something one might find in an upscale restaurant. Here's why.

Read more
This is the simple secret to making incredible meatloaf and meatballs
Upgrade your meatloaf and meatballs with this tip
Meatballs

Suppose you make a lot of dishes with ground beef. In that case, you know that this conveniently shrinkwrapped ingredient can come with one very annoying risk - crumbly, can't-reach-for-the-water-fast-enough, completely unappetizing dryness. Of course, many of us - thanks to knowledgable mothers and grandmothers - grew up armed, knowing this risk, prepared to tackle it head-on in our most beloved ground beef dishes. And while you, too, may know the secret to keeping your meatloaf, meatballs, or even burgers from drying out, you may not know that this technique has a name. It's called a panade.

A panade (puh-NOD) is simply a pasted mixture of bread and liquid that's added to ground beef recipes like meatloaf or meatballs to make them moist and tender. Most often made of humble white bread and milk, this paste is the absolute best way to guarantee your ground beef dishes stay tender and moist instead of turning to flavorless meat bricks in your marinara sauce.
How does a panade work?
The combination of starch and liquid in a panade keeps the proteins in the ground beef from tightening and shrinking during the cooking process. As the meat cooks, the panade turns into a sort of moisture-making lubricant that settles between protein fibers, keeping them from getting tough.

Read more