A Couple Cooks

Sweet Potato Soup

December 06, 2021

This sweet potato soup recipe is a one pot wonder! Hearty and lusciously creamy, its velvety flavor will please everyone.

Sweet potato soup

Oh hello, luscious and velvety Sweet Potato Soup! This root vegetable is makes the best sweet and creamy puree. Accentuate it with a healthy dose of smoked paprika and the flavor is earthy, subtly smoky and absolutely irresistible. This healthy soup will please just about anyone: even avowed sweet potato haters! This recipe comes straight from cookbook author and dear friend of ours, Tanorria Askew in her new cookbook Staples +5!

Ingredients in this sweet potato soup

This sweet potato soup recipe is creamy, velvety, smoky, savory, and sweet all at once. This one will impress just about everyone: even people tend to avoid sweet potatoes (like our 4 year old!). It’s got a light swirl of cream to bring a rich body, but you can use full-fat coconut milk for vegan and dairy free. With those options, it works for nearly every diet! Here’s what you’ll need:

  • Onion, carrots, and celery (see below for a substitute)
  • Sweet potatoes
  • Olive oil
  • Smoked paprika, garlic powder, salt and pepper
  • Fresh thyme
  • Bay leaves
  • Vegetable broth
  • Heavy cream or full-fat coconut milk
Staples + 5

About the book: Staples + 5

This sweet potato soup recipe is from the new cookbook Staples +5 by Tanorria Askew. The great part about this book? It’s all about utilizing your pantry and staple ingredients to make easy, healthy meals! The concept is that you need a base of pantry and fridge items: then add 5 ingredients to that and you can make endless variations of delicious meals!

Tanorria is a former MasterChef contestant, personal chef, and incredible person we’re honored to call friend. Now she’s added cookbook author to her resume, and we could not be more thrilled for her! In this book she shares recipes from her family’s Midwestern table, drawing on a tradition of cooking she learned from her grandparents: make the most of what you have, and share it with those you love.

We could not recommend this cookbook more! Grab a copy of Staples +5 here.

Sweet potato soup

Tips and substitutions

This sweet potato soup is easy to make at home with a short list of ingredients. Here are a few tips to the cooking process:

  • Substitute celery seed if desired. When making this soup recipe, we made an error: we thought we had celery in our refrigerator! We substituted 1 carrot and 1 large pinch celery seed, and it turned out great! The earthy undertone from the celery seed was delicious.
  • An immersion blender is helpful. An immersion blender is also called a stick blender, and it’s absolutely essential for pureed soups in our opinion! This way, you can leave the soup in the pot and blend it, instead of transferring to a blender (which can result in hot soup splashing).

Garnishing this sweet potato soup

This sweet potato soup comes out creamy, velvety, lightly smoky, and irresistible. Tanorria recommends candied bacon as a topping, which would take it over the top! Here are a few other ideas for garnishes that she suggests and some ideas of our own:

Sweet Potato Soup

Make it a meal: side dishes to add

How to make this sweet potato soup recipe into a meal? Pureed soups often need more protein to make them into a filling. Here are a few ways to accessorize this soup and make it into a meal:

More sweet potato recipes

Sweet potatoes are perhaps our favorite vegetable of all time, over here. Here are a few more tasty sweet potato recipes to try:

This sweet potato soup recipe is…

Vegetarian, vegan, plant-based, dairy-free and gluten-free.

Print
Sweet Potato Soup

Sweet Potato Soup

  • Author: Sonja Overhiser
  • Prep Time: 15 minutes
  • Cook Time: 30 minutes
  • Total Time: 45 minutes
  • Yield: 8 cups (4 to 6 servings)
  • Diet: Vegetarian

Description

This sweet potato soup recipe is a one pot wonder! Hearty and lusciously creamy, its velvety flavor will please everyone.

Ingredients

  • 1 large yellow onion
  • 2 large carrots
  • 2 celery ribs (we substituted 1 extra carrot and 1 large pinch celery seeds)
  • 3 large sweet potatoes (about 2 1/2 pounds total)
  • 1 tablespoon olive oil
  • 1 tablespoon smoked paprika
  • ½ tablespoon garlic powder
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • Freshly ground black pepper, to taste
  • 2 sprigs fresh thyme
  • 2 bay leaves
  • 4 cups vegetable broth or stock
  • ½ cup water
  • ½ cup heavy cream or full-fat coconut milk (for vegan)
  • Toasted pumpkin seeds, chopped pistachios, or pomegranate seeds, to garnish (optional)

Instructions

  1. Peel and dice the onion and carrots. Dice the celery. Peel the sweet potatoes and chop them into 1/2-inch cubes.
  2. In a large pot over medium heat, heat the olive oil. Add the onion, celery and carrots and stir, making sure to coat all the veggies with oil. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes until the onion and celery become translucent.
  3. Add the sweet potatoes and toss until everything is coated. Season with paprika, garlic, salt and pepper. Stir until the seasonings are evenly distributed. Cook for 2 to 3 minutes.
  4. Add the thyme and bay leaves and stir. Add the vegetable stock and increase the heat to bring to a boil. When boiling, reduce the heat to medium-low, and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes or until the sweet potatoes are tender.
  5. Remove from the heat and remove the thyme stems and bay leaves. Using an immersion blender, puree until smooth. (If you don’t have an immersion blender, carefully blend the soup in batches in a regular blender.) Once blended, stir in the heavy cream. Serve topped with toasted nuts or seeds, if using. Cool to room temperature before storing. Refrigerate in an airtight container for up to 1 week.

Notes

Reprinted with permission from Staples +5 by Tanorria Askew.

  • Category: Soup
  • Method: Blended
  • Cuisine: Soup

Keywords: Sweet potato soup, sweet potato soup recipe

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