Sweet Potato Soup Recipe (Silky Smooth) - Real + Vibrant (2024)

FAQs

How do you make soup silky smooth? ›

How do you make soup smooth? For a soup with a smooth consistency, work with veggies that are soft but not mushy. Additionally, streaming oil or cream into the soup can better emulsify the ingredients for a silkier texture. Blender features can also play a major role in getting your soup to the right consistency.

When adding water to your pot of potatoes, use cold water. This ensures even cooking of your potatoes. When the soup comes to a boil, reduce heat a touch to maintain a gentle boil. Boiling at too high of a temperature will break down your potatoes and make your soup grainy.

It's important not to chop them too finely before cooking. Keeping them in medium-ish sized chunks should work best. If the potatoes are chopped too finely, then too much starch will be released into the broth, resulting in a gummy-like texture.

Why isn't my potato soup creamy? Most creamy soups require you to add dairy of some sort into it. If you're finding your soup is too thin adding milk, add in cream instead, or whole milk.

"The majority of issues with a creamy soup come from undercooking the vegetables," explains Rick Martinez, associate food editor at BA. They should be uniformly soft, with no resistance or "bite"—otherwise, they will not stand up to the blender. You'll be left with a soup that's watery in portions and lumpy in others.

The recommended method here is to press the potatoes through a ricer (instead of using a blender), which gives the soup a light and clean texture and eliminates the gluey consistency common in other recipes.

If you've ever tried potato leek soup and found it to have a gluey texture, it's because the potatoes released too much starch from being over handled. This is unfortunately easy to do with a food processor or blender (heck, it can even happen when making mashed potatoes, which is why I avoid using an electric mixer).

FYI – with potatoes, you want to blend only as much as necessary to get a smooth texture. Blending them too long can make them gummy. Once all the soup is pureed you can pour it back into the pot and rewarm, or simply scoop and serve!

Cornstarch is a very effective thickener, and a little bit can go a long way. Add cornstarch to a small amount of cold water or other liquid (wine or stock) and whisk into a thick slurry.

What makes soup creamier? ›

A roux is a classic technique for thickening soups and sauces, and simply refers to the use of fat and flour together—in this case, butter and flour! Whole milk adds plenty of creaminess, too, and voila! A lovely rich and creamy chicken soup.

If you want to thicken your potato soup without using any additional ingredients, you can try cooking it for a longer period of time. Simmering the soup will evaporate some of the liquid, resulting in a thicker consistency.

To thin the soup out, simply add more water. To make it creamier, add some milk, cream or coconut milk. A dollop of yogurt or sour cream are also good additions as you blend the soup together.

Many of today's cream soups, however, are made by simmering the major flavor ingredients in thickened broth until they're tender. Then the solids are strained and, in most cases, pureed and returned to the soup. A second straining often follows to get the velvety-smooth texture that's associated with cream soups.

Many smooth and creamy soups will need to be blended after cooking, and while any blender will theoretically work, a power blender with a stronger motor will create the smoothest soups.