I had some sweet potatoes from my veg box to use up and decided to make a smoky potato chowder. This is primarily smoky creamy sweet potato soup, but I added a bit of carrot for a bit of added flavour and sweetness (since I had lovely fat carrots in my veg box) and some veg box potatoes for added body and creaminess and also I really just love potatoes. The creaminess comes from potatoes and blended cashews. There is an added umami hit from a tbsp of tomato paste, 1 tbsp of smoked paprika, 1/3 cup of nutritional yeast, and 2 tsp of marmite (you don’t taste the marmite, it just gives a nice salty balance). I wanted a bit of gentle heat, so I added some Aleppo pepper flakes. I left some potato chunks for body and added some dehydration spinach and parsley flakes. I think this would be amazing with some broccoli or more spinach or kale. Here is what I did.

I chopped a large red onion in my mini food processor and then sautéed it in some oil with the smoked paprika and chilli flakes for about 7 mins. While that was cooking, I let 1/2c of cashews soak in 1/2c of boiling water. I chopped 2-3 sweet potatoes, 1 medium potato, and 1 fat carrot and added it to the onion spice pot with the tomato paste and covered it with boiling water and a stock cube and let it simmer until everything was very very soft.

Once everything was soft, I put the cashews, cashew water, nutritional yeast, and marmite in a blender and blitzed until smooth. I removed some chunks of veg, then added the cashew paste and blended the whole thing until smooth or the texture you like, then add the chunks back and the dehydrated spinach and parsley. At this point, the soup is usually really thick, so I slowly added boiling water until I reached the desired consistency and then salt, pepper, spices to taste. Done and done.