Try our light and fresh garden pea soup recipe with parsley

Living at home, under lockdown, has given many of us more time available to cook. We have heard from some of our previous guests, who told us that they have been finding it challenging to keep a handle on their weight, with many people adding on the pounds (or kilos) since the pandemic began. Soups are a great option for a quick, tasty and filling meal, where you can more easily control the calorie intake.

We have recently published our Souping for health e-cookbook containing 40 stunning plant-based soups. To give you a taste of this e-cookbook I want to share one of the light and low soups included in the book, for you to try at home. This garden pea soup recipe with parsley is fresh and works well whatever the weather.

Peas are a great source of nutrition and are low in calorie. They are also quick to cook, often languish in the freezer, so this recipe does not take you very long to rustle up from scratch. I recommend using fresh parsley in the soup, rather than the store-cupboard dried variety, to really give the soup a lovely lift in flavour. If you don’t have parsley then you can miss it out, add more lemon and black pepper, with another tablespoon of dried oregano.

Cooking tip: I like the crunchiness of peas, so often I blend half of this soup and mix it with the other unblended half. Blending gives the soup a creamy base texture (rather than leaving it as a broth type soup), with some peas to chew on.

Garden pea soup with parsley recipe

Serves: 8

Calories: 777 total, 97 per serving

Allergens: None

Ingredients

2 large leeks, finely chopped

2 tbsp lemon juice

1 tbsp dried oregano

1 courgette, skin on, chopped

3 cups frozen peas

5 cups water (or homemade vegetable stock)

Large handful fresh parsley, roughly torn

Garnish: few whole cooked peas and fresh parsley

Method

Cook the leeks in a large soup pan, using a small amount of water to prevent sticking, for 8 minutes, until starting to soften.

Add the lemon juice, dried oregano and courgette. Cook for a further 10 minutes.

Add the frozen peas and water to the pan. Bring to the boil. Then turn down the heat, add the fresh parsley and leave to simmer gently for 15 minutes.

Remove from the heat and put a few cooked peas to one side.

Puree the rest of the soup using a hand blender (or in a food processor) until smooth. (Alternatively, if you prefer to have a more textured soup, put half of the mixture to one side, blend half, then add the unblended half back in).

Serve hot, garnish with a few cooked peas and fresh parsley.

Love soup? Souping for health recipe e-book

We love soups at the retreat and serve them at lunch and dinner times in the cooler months. They are always a popular part of our menu and, over the years, many guests have asked us for the recipes.

We are delighted to have brought many of these popular recipes together into one downloadable cookbook, Souping for health, for you to make and enjoy at home.

The 75-pages of illustrated plant-based (vegan) low-salt soups are bursting with flavour and nutrition. In this new book we share 40 of our most popular recipes, together with some soup-making staples, like how to make a vegetable stock and store-cupboard essentials. There are four chapters of soups ranging from quick and easy (make from scratch in less than 30 minutes), light and low (low calorie, lighter to enjoy), comfort (those soups that make your whole body smile) through to dinner party impressive (a collection of soups with a fancier ingredient list that are even more special). You can download your copy of the Souping for health e-cookbook now in our online shop.

Plant-based vegan food at La Crisalida health and wellbeing retreat

I hope you enjoy making and eating this soup. If you want to try other dishes, there are lots of plant-based vegan recipes on our health and wellbeing blog.

You can also visit the retreat and try the plant-based food for yourself.