French Spring Soup

March 24, 2022

French Spring Soup is a creamy vegetable-based soup perfect for spring when asparagus is at its peak of flavor.

As vegetable soup recipes go, they’re usually pretty decent. My Italian Vegetable Soup is a good one if you’re watching your calories. My Tuscan Vegetable Soup is flavorful and has Parmesan cheese mixed in. And my Autumn Vegetable Soup is a butternut squash-based soup that is lightly sweetened with apple and maple syrup. This French Spring Soup is a tasty vegetable soup, but it has a a creamy broth instead of straight-out broth.

Ingredients needed:

unsalted butter
leeks
onion
water
chicken broth
potatoes
sliced mushrooms
asparagus
carrots
white rice
garlic
spinach
half and half or heavy cream
salt

How to make French Spring Soup:

The full, printable recipe is at the end of this post.

Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat. Stir in the leeks and onion, and cook until tender.

Pour water into the pot. Mix in the potatoes, mushrooms, asparagus, carrots, rice and garlic. Season with salt. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat, and simmer 30 minutes, or until the vegetables and rice are tender.

Stir the spinach and cream into the soup mixture, and continue cooking about 5 minutes before serving.

Vegetable substitution suggestions:

The great thing about making a vegetable soup is that you can always leave out vegetables that don’t appeal to you. Or you can substitute your favorite veggies for some of the vegetables in the soup. Use green onions in place of leeks. Use shallots in place of onion. If you want this to be a vegetarian soup, use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.

Try using zucchini instead of asparagus. Use butternut squash in place of carrots. Cauliflower rice can be used in place of white rice. And Swiss chard or kale may be used in place of spinach.

So this is still a brothy soup. The cream added to it just gives it a richer texture. You can certainly leave out the cream if you’d like. Or try adding whole milk or evaporated milk to the soup instead of cream. Enjoy!

French Spring Soup is simply flavored with garlic and salt. The vegetables provide the rest of the flavor. Try adding in a little fresh thyme, if you would like to add an additional flavor component.

The Best Soup Recipes: