This easy Beetroot Soup is flavoured with caraway and spiked with chilli. It is smooth, light and such a beautiful colour. It’s a feast for your tummy and for your eyes!
I don’t really ‘do’ Valentine’s Day – there is no card swapping or gift giving – but I do like an excuse to pretty up food and remind Mr TS just how much I love him.
This beetroot soup is delicious but plain without those cute little hearts sashaying around on its surface.
Now it cries out ‘Ooh, look at me, aren’t I FABULOUS?! See how much she adores you?!’
Beetroot Soup and Borscht
The inspiration for this beetroot soup recipe came from the beautiful traditional Eastern European borscht.
Borscht is a substantial dish, full of savoury flavours which usually sees beetroot paired with potatoes, carrots and cabbage.
This easy beetroot soup is a much lighter dish, leaving out the potatoes, carrots and celery and allowing the beetroot to take centre stage.
It is perfect as starter or served up with some chunky bread rolls if you want a more substantial meal.
Delicately flavoured with garlic, caraway seeds and chipotle chilli, this blended beetroot soup is subtly smoky and very moreish.
How To Make Beetroot Soup
For a full recipe card see the end of this post but read on for a few extra tips and tricks to help you on your way to beetroot heaven!
- I buy fresh beetroot in season and roast them whole for about 2 hours in a baking dish covered with tin foil. Any I don’t use immediately are frozen to use in soups and curries.
- If you want to skip this stage you can use ready cooked vacuum packed beetroot but NOT pickled beetroot or your Valentine will run a mile and who could blame them?
- I’ve used red onion as my base for this soup, mainly because the colour is a good match! Feel free to use a brown or white onion in its place.
- Caraway provides the earthy, sweetly savoury flavour profile for this soup but you could replace it with cumin seeds or black onion seeds.
- Chipotle chilli flakes give a smoky heat which I love. If you aren’t so keen on heat use smoked paprika instead.
Toppings for Beetroot Soup
You don’t have to make little coconut hearts of course, you can swish the yoghurt through in swirls or leave it out completely. Some alternative toppings for beetroot soup could be:
- Chopped fresh herbs – dill goes particularly well with beetroot but you could also try flat leaf parsley, coriander leaf, mint or oregano.
- Fresh croutons – fry bite sized cubes of yesterday’s bread in a little olive oil with garlic until brown and crisp.
- A spoonful of fresh pesto – the pepperiness of my nasturtium pesto or the texture of my sundried tomato pesto would be brilliant here.
- Homemade vegetable crisps – parsnip, beetroot or potato would be perfect!
Storing and Freezing Beetroot Soup
This soup keeps well, covered, in the fridge for up to four days. Reheat to piping hot when you are ready to eat it.
Freezing beetroot soup is easy. Allow it to cool completely, transfer it to a suitable container and freeze. It will last for up to three months. Defrost completely before reheating.
Looking for More Root Vegetable Soups? Try…
- Sweet Potato and Red Lentil
- Slow Cooker Swede Soup
- Celeriac with Apple
- Winter Vegetable Soup
- Curried Parsnip Soup
Beetroot Soup
Ingredients
For the Soup
- 200 g Cooked Beetroot roughly chopped
- 1 tbsp Sunflower Oil
- 1 small Red Onion peeled and chopped
- 2 cloves Garlic peeled and chopped
- 1/2 tsp Caraway Seeds
- 1/4 tsp Chipotle Chilli Flakes, to taste (optional)
- 300 ml Vegetable Stock
- Salt and Black Pepper to taste
To Serve
- 2 tbsp thick coconut milk yoghurt
- 1-2 tbsp your favourite plant milk I used oat
Instructions
- Gently heat a tablespoonful of sunflower oil in a small frying pan, add the onion and fry until soft.
- Add the garlic, caraway seeds and chilli seeds to taste and fry for a further minute.
- Put the cooked beetroot, onion mixture and vegetable stock into a high speed blender or food processor and blend until really smooth. Add a little more water if it's too thick and salt and pepper to taste.
- Return your soup to your saucepan and heat through gently.
- Pour into warmed soup bowls.
- Whisk the coconut yoghurt with a little plant milk to thin it - you want a dropping consistency like thick cream. Dot spots of the mixture around your beloved's bowl of soup. Drag the tip of a skewer or a cocktail stick through each creamy spot to make little hearts.
Notes
Nutrition
If you make my recipe I’d love to hear how it turns out for you. Please leave a comment and a star rating below and share your pictures with me on social media. Tag me @thinlyspread and include the hashtag #thinlyspread so I can see them!
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You’re not kidding on how fabulous those cute little yoghurty hearts look, properly amazing!
I was so pleased with them, I was like a Cheshire cat!
I bet roasting the beetroot really add to the flavour. Elinor x
It did, I always roast my beetroot if I’m not using them raw, the flavour is so much better.
Ahhh so pretty and beetroot soup is delicious. I love this 🙂
I love it to bits, it’s fab as a chilled soup too but it’s far too cold outside today for that nonsense!
I absolutely love beetroot for the flavour and that fabulous colour that it gives everything.
The colour is divine! I’ve been a bit addicted to it lately 🙂
What a beautiful soup and design for Valentine’s Day. The soda bread is a perfect match!
Thank you! I love the simplicity of soda bread – it makes warm, fresh bread a possibility at the end of a busy day!
Your soup has such a gorgeous color! I’m intrigued by the coconut milk yogurt thinned with almond milk as a substitute for sour cream. I’ll have to give that a try.
I love anything with beets! What a gorgeous looking soup, perfect for Vday!
Looks so vibrant and healthy! Never had beetroots.. can’t wait to try this
OMG… this beetroot soups looks soooo cute. Honestly, it melts my heart. Love the gorgeous red colour, love the coconut hearts. And those fingerprint hearts?! Oh my… cuteness overload 🙂 Great recipe. I’m sharing this!
Those little hearts are so sweet! What a lovely idea.
Hello Chris!
I am honestly curious: Are you vegan or vegetarian? You call yourself a vegan lover of the world in your description but post vegetarian recipes too. So, which one is it?
Nevertheless, a lovely soup recipe. I don’t think coconut matches the beetroot flavour, but that’s just personal preference.
Have a lovely day!
Hi Cindy, I’ve been vegan for just over a year. Before that I was vegetarian for 30 years. This blog is a record of my personal journey since 2010 so my older vegetarian recipes are still there. I also cook for all my family, not all of whom are vegan.
I think coconut is a perfect match for the beetroot here but, as you say, we all have different tastes.