30 Minute Easy Creamy Spicy Parsnip Soup

Creamy spiced parsnip soup topped with hazelnuts and croutons with roasted garlic is the perfect easy soup recipe.

5 from 1 vote

Course: Soup

Cuisine: British

Prep Time: 10

Cook Time: 20

Servings: servings

Preheat the oven to 180ºc and cut the very top off the head of garlic. Place on a piece of foil and drizzle with olive oil and sprinkle with some salt. Wrap in the foil and roast in the oven for about 30-40 minutes until the garlic is pale golden and very soft.
While the garlic is roasting, heat the vegetable oil in a large heavy sauce pan over medium heat. Once the oil is hot, add in the sliced onions and sweat them until they’re soft and translucent. Mix in the spices and the remaining thyme leaves and stir well.
Add the chopped parsnips to the pot and mix well to coat the parsnip in the spices. Pour the hot stock into the pan and bring to a boil. Turn the heat down and continue to simmer uncooked for about 15-20 minutes until the parsnips are soft.
Remove the roasted garlic from the oven and use a small knife or a toothpick to pull the cloves out of their sleeves and add to the pot. Using an immersion blender, blend the soup until it’s creamy and smooth. It will be very very thick. Add in the lemon juice and the milk if using. Taste and adjust the seasoning.
For serving you can make croutons by frying some bread in some olive oil and adding in the chopped hazelnuts right at the end, or you can use shop-bought, or skip it altogether.

If you don’t have time or don’t feel like roasting the garlic, you can simple chop some cloves of garlic and add them to the pot with the onions, but the flavour will be more pronounced and not as sweet and rounded as with the roasted garlic.
Once you’ve blended the soup and tasted it, you’ll more than likely think it needs lots of extra cumin, coriander and cinnamon but once you add the acid, it really lifts all the other flavours and balances everything out making the spices much more prominent and the pansies and roasted garlic truly standout- in a really good way! You can use a splash of cider vinegar instead of lemon if that’s what you have. Just go very slow. Vinegar is stronger than lemon so you’ll likely want to start with a small splash and go from there.
I added some milk at the end to get the consistency that I wanted. You could absolutely use water here for something a little lighter, or use cream for something richer and more indulgent. The milk was the perfect middle ground. If you use cream, you will lose a little bit of the flavour because the fat coats the mouth making your taste buds less sensitive.
The thickness of soups is a very personal preference. I like to make a soup so that once it’s blended its very thick and can be thinned out according to your taste.

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