Search

Join Culinate! Login or Register

Photo courtesy Debra Daniels-Zeller (#290405)

Join Culinate

With a free Culinate membership, you can:

Create your own recipe collections
Queue recipes for later use
Blog your culinary endeavors
Be part of our online community of cooks
And much more…

Join Now

Easy Creamy Turnip Greens Soup

From the book The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook by Debra Daniels-Zeller

Culinate editor’s note: This soup also is good topped with homemade croutons, as pictured.

Introduction

I created this soup one afternoon when I was hungry and had two bunches of tender spring turnips with greens. I cooked the greens in a little water and then puréed them with a few ingredients to balance the flavors. The result was a little taste of heaven in an almost-instant soup that I made week after week until spring turnips with greens were no longer on market tables.

Other greens like kale, collards, or braising greens have a stronger flavor and take longer to cook, but you can still use them as long as you make sure they cook until tender. Hazelnut butter is my favorite local addition, but you could also add almond or cashew butter or a little cream. Serve this treasure with crusty artisan bread.

Ingredients

	4	cups water
	1	Tbsp. fresh lemon juice or mild vinegar
	8 to 10	cups turnip greens (3 or 4 bunches)
	1	tsp. honey or agave nectar
	2	Tbsp. hazelnut (or almond or cashew) butter (see Note)
	~	Pinch of cayenne (optional)
	~	Salt
	1	Tbsp. rice flour (optional)
	~	Plain yogurt (optional)

Steps

Heat a heavy soup pot over medium heat. Add the water, lemon juice or vinegar, and turnip greens. Bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and simmer until the greens are tender, a few minutes.
Purée all the greens and water in a blender, 1 cup at a time, adding the honey, nut butter, cayenne if desired, and salt to taste to the first batch.
Return the purée to the soup pot and heat gently for a few minutes. If the soup is too thin, add a tablespoon of rice flour and stir until thickened. Serve with a dollop of yogurt if desired.

Notes

Hazelnut butter is often sold at farmers’ markets in the Pacific Northwest; Freddy Guys and Holmquist both offer it, but others do as well.

This content is from the book The Northwest Vegetarian Cookbook by Debra Daniels-Zeller.

Fresh from the Farmers’ Market

Turnip and Turnip Greens Soup

Mediterranean Grains and Greens

Middle Eastern Chard and Lentil Soup

Local Flavors

Tart and tender sorrel

Ideas for a hearty green

Local Flavors

Quelites love

A green of many names

Think before you type

Culinate welcomes comments that are on-topic, clean, and courteous. For the benefit of the community we reserve the right to delete comments that contain advertising, personal attacks, profanity, or which are thinly disguised attempts to promote another website.

Please enter your comment

Comment

I recommend this recipe

Format: Bare URLs are automatically linked; use this style: [http://www.example.com "place text to be linked here"] for prettier links. You may specify *bold* or _italic_ text. No HTML please.