10 Fall Soup Recipes for Seasonal Vegetables

Serious Eats has compiled a list of ten soup recipes designed for the fall season. The publication highlights dishes that make use of seasonal vegetables available at farmers markets and grocery stores, with techniques that are central to their success.

Roasted and Pureed Vegetable Soups

Several recipes rely on roasting vegetables to deepen their flavor before pureeing them into a creamy soup. For a roasted sweet potato soup, the publication instructs cooks to puree the roasted tubers with onions, garlic, carrots, and orange juice, using chicken or vegetable stock. A pistachio, orange zest, and herb gremolata is recommended as a topping.

A classic butternut squash soup follows a similar method, blending roasted squash and carrots with stock. The suggested finish is spiced whipped cream and brown butter-frizzled sage. For a Japanese-inspired twist, a miso-squash soup incorporates dashi, bonito flakes, miso, and apples, topped with shichimi togarashi spice blend.

Creamy Blended Soups

Pureeing is also key for creating a rich texture in other vegetable soups. A creamy spiced parsnip soup blends the root vegetable with aromatics like ginger, jalapeño, and coriander, finished with dollops of spiced whipped cream. A quick mushroom soup involves browning any variety of mushrooms in butter, deglazing with sherry, and then blending with milk and herbs.

The publication's classic carrot soup uses carrots prepared multiple ways-roasted, raw, and juiced-to build a concentrated flavor before being pureed. A lemon-herb yogurt is swirled in before serving.

Hearty Chunky and Topped Soups

Not all the recommended soups are smooth. Caldo verde, a Portuguese potato and kale soup with sausage, requires no blender and is described as straightforward to make. A loaded baked potato soup uses a ricer on microwaved potatoes to create a velvety base without becoming gluey; it is topped with cheese, chives, and crushed potato chips.

For a roasted cauliflower soup, the vegetable is roasted until sweet and nutty, then combined with cream and aromatics. A curry cream serves as the topping. Finally, a brown butter-sunchoke soup is pureed with leeks and sage, then topped with a combination of Brussels sprouts and bacon.

The source, Serious Eats, frames these dishes as ideal for cozy fall meals, suggesting they be served with crusty bread.