Cashews lend body, creaminess, and richness to this pea soup and also make it vegan; sub almonds if you prefer.
Recipe information
Yield
Serves 6
Ingredients
Preparation
Step 1
Heat oil in a large saucepan over medium-low. Add onions, celery, and garlic and cook, stirring often and adding a splash or so of water if the bottom of pan gets too brown, until golden brown, 30–40 minutes. Season with salt and pepper. Add cashews, sugar, red pepper flakes, and 3 cups water and bring mixture to a simmer. Cook until vegetables are very soft and losing their structure, 10–15 minutes.
Step 2
Blend one-third of sugar snap peas with one-third of vegetable mixture in a blender, adding some cooking liquid from vegetable mixture as needed to thin, until very smooth, about 2 minutes. Press purée through a fine-mesh sieve into a medium saucepan; discard solids. Working in 2 batches, repeat with remaining peas and vegetable mixture, adding water as needed if you run out of cooking liquid. If soup is still very thick, thin with water until you get a velvety, pourable consistency. (You should have about 7 cups soup.)
Step 3
Stir vinegar into soup; season with more salt and pepper and warm over medium-low until heated through.
Step 4
Serve soup topped with scallions and potato chips.
Do Ahead
Step 5
Soup can be made 2 days ahead. Let cool; cover and chill. Reheat over medium-low, thinning with water as needed until pourable.
Leave a Review
Reviews (4)
Back to TopI skipped the straining step too. I blended it thoroughly and the consistency was very thick and smooth. I needed to add a fair amount of water to thin it out once back in the saucepan . I found the soup to be quite sweet and added salt and white pepper to tone it down. I also skipped the potato crisps as a garnish. Other alternatives seemed better to be.
Anonymous
London, UK
9/30/2019
Does anyone know why the sodium in this is so high (30%)? Is it literally the potato chip garnish? There’s not even stock in here.
mysynapse
Los Angeles
1/3/2018
Very good! I used a bag of frozen peas, and since it wasn't full I added some frozen leeks (which went very well with it). I skipped the straining step and didn't find the fibrousness unpleasant. I also subbed apple cider vinegar for malt vinegar, and added a little extra. I thought this was a nice summer variation on split pea soup. Very easy, nutritious, and tasty.
baltimoreamateur
Baltimore, MD
5/2/2017
This soup was delicious and rich (definitely not for the calorie counter!). I used both snap peas and peas. I also used chicken stock to blend them because I wouldn't have had enough cooking liquid from the onion/celery mixture. Even though this is a green vegetable soup, the cashews make it rich enough to be a winter meal. I added some creme fraiche, crushed cashews and cilantro for garnish.
stacyhan
Seattle, WA
2/7/2017
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