Parsley is something that is growing prolifically in the garden at the moment. This is a good time of the year for green things. Of all the crops I have growing the parsley and the silverbeet are probably doing best. As a result I am cooking lot of both of them. I have to thank Nina, one of my regular correspondants, for this recipe. I am always on the look out for good parsley recipes but strangely I’d never thought of making soup. Well I have now and I definitely will again.
Parsley Soup
- 150g parsley, leaves seperated from stalks and both chopped finely.
- 2 celery stalks – finely chopped
- 2 medium onions – finely chopped
- 1 clove garlic – finely chopped
- 200g potatoes – diced
- 50g butter
- 1 – 1.5 litre chicken or vegetable stock (it will be richer with less stock but serve more people with more).
- 1/4 cup cream
- Salt and pepper
Melt the butter in a large pan. Add the onions, parsley stalks and celery. Saute over a low heat until softened. Add the garlic and saute for another couple of minutes. Add the stock and potatoes. Bring to the boil and then add salt & pepper to taste. Add half the finely chopped parsley leaves. Simmer until the potato is cooked. Puree. Add remaining parsley (or add it just before pureeing for a smoother texture) and cream. Mix together and heat through. Serve, ideally with some nice toast.
I’m sharing this recipe on The Gardener of Eden’s Thursday Kitchen Cupboard , and Greenish Thumb’s Garden to Table.
I’ve never thought of making soup from parsely either – just used it to garmish soup!
That looks just lovely.
I have never heard of parsley soup. This recipe sounds great and will come in handy when we have more parsley then we know what to do with!
I have to say I hadn’t either until Nina mentioned it – clearly she is an ideas woman.
This is what I needed when I had the mountain of parsley last year. At the moment I have just enough for standard uses, but it’s starting to come back. It looks lovely though, I might have to lie to Mr Good and Miss Three to get this one into them. Silverbeet is my standout crop at the moment – not much else being picked in my garden right now.
I wonder if they would be able to tell what it was. It kind of tastes generic ‘green’ to me, or rather it does until you add the second lot of parsley and then its pretty obvious what it is, and it tastes like parlsey too.
I never think of parsley as a primary ingredient – rather as just a seasoning. I need to change my perspective on it as obviously I am missing out on some ways to use it as a result. Thanks for the recipe.
I’m trying to think of other places where I use it as a primary ingredient; taboulleh and I have to admit that when I make puttanesca sauce it pretty much is. Other than that I use a lot of it in salsa verde but then that’s a sauce. Hmmm now you’ve got me thinking about how else I could use it.
Serious parsley glut here all the time (apparently the woman is dominant where parsley grows well!), it’s actually a bit of a weed and comes up everywhere. I do love it though and like the sound of this, I bet it would do you good eating it to, parsley are meant to be really good at mining for nutrients.
Love the adage, and I suspect this house bears it out…she says quietly looking over her shoulder…
I’ve done a lot of things with parsley, but never made parsley soup! This sounds great. It’s too hot here now for soup, but I will file this away for this winter when parsley is plentiful. It’s a lot like the recipe for my Green Choi soup.
I use a very similar recipe for watercress. I think you could easily use it for most green things; celery and rocket come to mind.
Interesting and it just HAS to be good! Now if I could get my parsley to grow better. ..
I find neglect works pretty well…
I have lots of parsley growing, in pots at the back door, in my veggie patch and a whole border along a garden bed at the kitchen garden at The Farmhouse.
This is a lovely simple recipe which I’m going to share with my guests, they love to wander down to the garden and pick from it and cook…………thanks for sharing.
I don’t think you can ever have too much parsley – there’s always something you could put it in.
What a great recipe for using parsley. I’ve never had or heard of parsley soup. I will have to file this away for when my parsley decides to take over the garden!
You do need a lot so I would definitely wait til then.
I have to say the same as others have said. I saw parsley just for garnishing as I do with cilantro. Sometimes my parsley go untrimmed as I use in dishes only for my daughter. She would love to have a soup from her favorite herb.
Your daughter has excellent taste in herbs – I love parsley, even as a garnish. My mum tells me that when I was very little the only thing I could stomach was tripe which she made with parsley sauce. i had it for dinner every night for months when I was about 2. Haven’t eaten much tripe since but the parsley habit has stuck.
Glad you liked it, Liz. And you wrote it up beautifully. 🙂
I’ve got a patch of very large-leafed rocket – almost the size of silverbeet! So I made a soup out of some of that, today, too. Pretty much the same recipe (I also used potato like you did) but I left out the celery and I added more garlic. I know that opinion on rocket (arugula) is divided – you either love it or hate it – but I just love the smell and the peppery taste.
As the leaves were so large, I took out what I could of the centre stems as they can be a bit fibrous at that size. The soup needs to be well-pureed otherwise it can have a ‘slimy’ texture, a bit like spinach. It was yummy, I’ve gotta say. I especially bought some cream (I’m sure we’ll use the rest up, somehow!) and I finished it off with a bit of grated parmigiano reggiano cheese.
I do like a tasty soup! ESPECIALLY on such a miserable day/night as we are having at the moment.
…and here I go replying to myself again. And how massive a pile is 150g of parsley? It’s around a supermarket bag full!
I make a very similar soup using watercress – I imagine its a bit like the rocket version. If you have some watercress then I would highly recommend it. My watercress self seeds and has just emerged so in a month or so I should be harvesting away.
I’m getting forgetful, it’s my age. I also added some white wine. Okay, I’m done now!
Hi Liz,
That soup sounds lovely-thanks so much for the inspirational idea!!
This would be very easy to adapt to the thermomix. You’d cook it all in the one bowl and it’d chop everything up for you.
Thanks! I’ve got parsley starting to pop up everywhere. I’ve pinned this one for later on.
Lovely idea for a soup, especially for when the season is in transition!
Boy, this sounds fantastic. I will definitely make this sometime this summer. Parsley always looks so great in the garden doesn’t it?