Recipes › Thyme › Thyme and Potato Soup with Crispy Shallots
Thyme and Potato Soup with Crispy Shallots
A deeply savoury, velvet-smooth potato soup built almost entirely around fresh thyme, which is added in two stages to give both depth and brightness. The base is a classic combination of leek, potato and stock, but the quantity of thyme here takes it somewhere far more interesting than your average blended soup. Crispy fried shallots on top add crunch and the whole thing comes together in well under an hour.
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Ingredients
- 35 g fresh thyme, divided — see method
- 700 g floury potatoes such as Maris Piper, peeled and roughly diced into 2cm cubes
- 2 leeks, trimmed, washed and sliced
- 2 celery sticks, roughly chopped
- 3 cloves garlic, sliced
- 40 g unsalted butteror use olive oil for dairy-free
- 1200 ml vegetable stock, hot
- 80 ml double creamor use crème fraîche
- 3 shallots, thinly sliced into rings
- 3 tbsp sunflower oil
- 1 tsp fine sea salt
- ½ tsp white pepper
Contains: celery, cereals gluten, milk.
Method
- Melt the butter in a large saucepan over a medium-low heat. Add the leeks, celery and a pinch of salt and cook gently for 8 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the leeks are completely soft but not coloured.About 8 min
- Add the garlic and cook for a further 2 minutes. Strip the leaves from 25g of the thyme and add them to the pan, stirring well to coat everything in the herb. Cook for 1 minute until fragrant.About 3 min
- Add the diced potatoes and pour over the hot stock. Bring to a gentle boil, then reduce the heat, cover with a lid and simmer for 20 minutes until the potatoes are completely tender and collapsing.About 22 min
- While the soup is cooking, make the crispy shallots. Heat the sunflower oil in a small frying pan over a medium-high heat. Add the shallot rings and fry, stirring frequently, for 6–8 minutes until deeply golden and crisp. Lift out with a slotted spoon onto a plate lined with kitchen paper and season with a little salt. They will crisp up further as they cool.About 8 min
- Remove the soup from the heat. Using a stick blender, blitz until completely smooth. Stir in the double cream and season with salt and white pepper. If the soup is thicker than you like, add a splash more hot water or stock.About 3 min
- Strip the leaves from the remaining 10g of thyme. Ladle the soup into warm bowls, drizzle with a little extra cream if you like, scatter over the crispy shallots and finish with the fresh thyme leaves.About 2 min
Tips
- Adding fresh thyme at the end as well as during cooking gives you two different flavour notes — the deep, cooked-in savouriness from the first batch and a fresher, brighter hit from the raw leaves on top.
- If your soup tastes a bit flat, it almost always needs more salt rather than more anything else. Season gradually and taste as you go.
- The crispy shallots can be made up to a day ahead and kept in a small airtight container at room temperature.
Ring the changes
- Stir in 100g of crumbled blue cheese just before blending for a richer, more robust soup that works brilliantly with the thyme.
- For a vegan version, use olive oil instead of butter and swap the cream for a good-quality oat cream or simply leave it out — the soup is excellent without it.
Keeping it
Store the soup without the crispy shallots in the fridge for up to 4 days or freeze for up to 3 months. The shallots are best made fresh each time but will keep in an airtight container at room temperature for 24 hours.
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