This creamy vegan artichoke soup is dairy free and gluten free. The texture is thick and velvety and the taste is rich and luscious, with no cream added! It's great served warm or cold. 

I don't use a lot of gadgets in my kitchen. In fact, if I could choose only one appliance to use in my cooking, I'd pick my Vitamix high speed blender. I use my blender almost everyday. I make green smoothies in it, nut butters, dairy free cream sauces and so much more. So you can imagine my excitement when Melissa's Produce invited me to meet the biggest blender aficionado in the cooking world, Tess Masters, aka The Blender Girl. I got to sample new recipes from her latest book, The Perfect Blend, and then I came home and tried out her recipe for a creamy vegan artichoke soup. Spoiler alert: it's pretty fantastic.

In case you don't know Tess, she's the gluten free and vegan Aussie and author behind The Blender Girl and The Blender Girl Smoothies. Her latest book, The Perfect Blend Cookbook hits all my favorite things. She breaks down the chapters by the effects different ingredients have on your system like energy, immunity, detox, anti-inflammatory (always one of my favorite subjects) and alkalinity. And of course all of the nutritious recipes are made easy peasy in the blender.

I picked her Artichoke Ace recipe to try it, because I have a pretty big love of artichokes. Artichokes are a great detoxifier. They help with digestion and moving toxins through the body, not to mention are a good source of Vitamin C and K. So yeah, I'm in on anything artichoke.

Best of all is that this creamy artichoke soup is cream free. It's a vegan soup with no dairy, but great consistency due to the addition of some cauliflower and nuts to bolster the texture. I have an almond allergy so swapped out walnuts for almonds and it still worked beautifully.

This vegan cream of artichoke soup is great warm or cold. Pair it with a salad for a whole meal, or serve it as a first course at a fancy dinner party. No one needs to know you quickly whipped it up using a blender!

Creamy Vegan Artichoke Soup

From Tess Masters' The Perfect Blend Cookbook
Serves 6 as a starter, 4 as a main

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons extra virgin olive oil

• 2 cups (300g) diced yellow onion

• 2 teaspoons minced garlic (about 2 cloves)

• Sea salt

• 1 cup (100g) chopped cauliflower florets

• 6 cups vegetable broth

• 4 1/2 cups (720g) thawed frozen artichoke hearts, or 3 (8.5-ounce/240g) cans artichokes in water (if using canned, rinse thoroughly and include more cauliflower)

• Freshly ground black pepper

• 1/4 cup (35g) blanched slivered almonds

• 1 1/2 tablespoons fresh lemon juice, plus more to serve

Optional Boosters

• 1 1/2 teaspoons finely chopped fresh thyme, plus more to taste

• 2 teaspoons truffle oil

• 1 tablespoon finely chopped flat-leaf parsley

Instructions

1. In a large saucepan, heat the oil over medium heat and sauté the onions and garlic with a pinch of salt for about 5 minutes until the onions are soft and translucent. Add the cauliflower and sauté for another minute.

2. Add the vegetable broth, artichokes, 1/2 teaspoon of the salt, the pepper; increase the heat to high and bring just to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium and simmer, uncovered, for about 20 minutes, until the cauliflower is just tender.

3. Remove the saucepan from the heat, stir in the nuts and fresh thyme booster, and allow the soup to cool slightly.

4. Pour the soup into your blender in batches and puree on high for 30 to 60 seconds until smooth and creamy. (For conventional blenders, remove the small center lid cap and cover the opening with a kitchen towel so steam can escape while you blend.) Return the soup to the saucepan, add the remaining 1/2 teaspoon salt, lemon juice, and truffle oil booster. Tweak the salt, pepper, lemon juice, and thyme to taste, and warm the soup over low heat. This soup also tastes phenomenal cold.

5. To serve, ladle the soup into bowls and garnish each bowl with freshly ground pepper and the parsley booster. Pass lemon juice, pepper, and salt at the table.

Looking for other healthy soup recipes?

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