Recipes › Lettuce › Chilled Lettuce and Pea Soup with Crème Fraîche
Chilled Lettuce and Pea Soup with Crème Fraîche
This is a proper cold soup — vivid green, smooth as silk, and genuinely refreshing on a hot summer day. A full head of round lettuce gives the soup its silky body and a gentle bitterness that stops it tasting like blended peas alone. It takes barely any time to make but needs a couple of hours in the fridge, so it is an ideal make-ahead dish for when you know lunch is going to be busy.
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Ingredients
- 1 round or butterhead lettuce, leaves separated and washed — roughly 300g once trimmedor use 2 little gem lettuces plus the outer leaves of a cos
- 300 g frozen peasor use fresh podded peas in season
- 750 ml vegetable stock, hot
- 2 banana shallots, finely chopped
- 1 cloves garlic, finely chopped
- 20 g unsalted butter
- 20 g fresh mint leaves
- 120 ml crème fraîche
- 1 lemon, juiced
- 1 tsp fine sea salt
- 1 pinch white pepper
- 4 tbsp extra crème fraîche (optional)to serve
Contains: milk.
Method
- Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over a medium-low heat. Add the shallots and cook, stirring, for 4 minutes until softened but not coloured. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more.About 5 min
- Pour in the hot stock and bring to a brisk simmer. Add the peas and cook for 2 minutes — you want the peas just tender and still bright green, not overcooked and drab.About 3 min
- Remove the pan from the heat and immediately add all the lettuce leaves and the mint. Stir them into the hot liquid — the residual heat will wilt them within about 30 seconds. The quicker you move to blending, the greener your soup will be.About 1 min
- Transfer the soup to a blender in batches and blend on high speed for at least 90 seconds per batch until completely smooth. Add the crème fraîche and lemon juice to the final batch in the blender. Taste for seasoning, adding salt and white pepper as needed.About 4 min
- Pass the blended soup through a fine-mesh sieve into a large bowl, pressing the solids firmly with the back of a ladle. This step gives you a genuinely silky texture — do not skip it. Discard the fibrous solids left in the sieve.About 3 min
- Cover the bowl with cling film and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until thoroughly cold. Serve in chilled bowls with a swirl of crème fraîche on top if you like.
Tips
- Speed is colour. The moment you add the lettuce and mint, start blending as quickly as possible — every extra minute of heat turns your vivid green soup a duller shade of khaki.
- Chill your serving bowls in the freezer for 10 minutes before ladling in the soup. It makes a real difference to how long it stays cold at the table.
- If the soup thickens too much in the fridge, stir in a splash of cold water or stock to loosen it before serving.
Ring the changes
- To make this vegan, replace the butter with 1 tbsp of olive oil and swap the crème fraîche for a good-quality coconut yoghurt or oat crème fraîche.
- Add 80g of soft goat's cheese in place of the crème fraîche for a tangy, richer version that works well as a starter for a dinner party.
Keeping it
Store in a covered container in the fridge for up to 2 days. Stir well before serving as the soup may separate slightly on standing. Not suitable for freezing — the texture becomes grainy after thawing.
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