Cashews secret ingredient in creamy vegan soups
There's nothing better on a cold winter day, then a hot bowl of creamy soup. Cream of broccoli. Cream of mushroom. Cream of, well, anything, really.
Of course, cream soups - loaded with saturated fat and calories - are a bit on the decadent side, especially when shaving off a few pounds was one of your New Year's resolutions. But it's that creamy goodness, generally the combination of cream and butter (no surprise), that make them so deliciously desirable.
There are plenty of ways to get creamy soups back on your table. In fact, cream soups can be tinkered with fairly easily in terms of reducing the fat and calories. Common methods include using reduced fat milk with a little flour to thicken; stirring reduced fat sour cream in at the end of cooking and adding pureed rice, beans or potatoes to the soup to thicken it. Heck, I once pureed tortilla chips in a Mexican-spiced soup to make it more hearty.
Yet while all of these are good ideas, none of them seem to yield that same creamy flavor I crave this time of year.
So I was intrigued when I signed up for a vegan soup cooking class at Flavour Cooking School in Forest Park and saw Broccoli Bisque on the lesson plan. Vegan Broccoli Bisque? In other words, Cream of Broccoli soup without the cream. Now, this was going to be interesting.
Chef Kyla Page, who specializes in gluten-free, vegan cooking, uses cashews to add the richness and gently flavors the soup with tamari, a gluten-free soy sauce. She adds sautéed shiitake mushrooms and dill at the end, both of which add layers of flavor that take this soup from great to "over the top," as one family member likes to say.
Chef Page says this is the recipe her family always requests at holidays. Yet, it's so easy you can whip it up for a weeknight dinner.
Cashews do contain fat, and plenty of it. However, this is a much more healthy fat than in cream and butter. In addition, cashews are a dense energy source and high in fiber, making this soup pretty healthy. I used salted cashews because that's what I had on hand. Chef Page's recipe called for a combination of raw cashews and the roasted salted kind. The only caution I have is to adjust the salt and the use of tamari depending on whether you use salted or raw nuts.
Once you start using cashews, you'll find most cream soups will easily adapt. I'm thinking about trying Cauliflower Curry Soup with cashews next and encourage you to experiment with your favorite cream-based recipes. Healthy decadence awaits.
• M. Eileen Brown is the Daily Herald's director of strategic marketing and innovation and an incurable soup-a-holic. She specializes in vegetarian soups and blogs at soupalooza.com.