Elizabeth Passarella is the author of the essay collection Good Apple and a contributing editor at Southern Living. A former editor at Real Simple and Vogue, she has spent more than 20 years writing about food, travel, home design, and parenting in outlets including The New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Parents, Martha Stewart Weddings, Coastal Living, Airbnb, and The Kitchn. Elizabeth grew up in Memphis, Tennessee and now lives with her husband and three children in New York City.
updated May 3, 2019
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Those are the ingredients for Sara Kate’s Fridge-Clearing Avocado Soup. Maybe not the most seasonal group of ingredients in the middle of February, but it exhibits a very good (and healthy) idea for making creamy, silky soup. The finished product is below…
You may only think of yogurt as a garnish, something to plop on top of a soup or stew and slowly stir in as you eat. And it does make a good garnish (we’ve done that here and here). But if you have a recipe that calls for cream, you can often substitute yogurt for a lighter overall dish.
Of course, yogurt is not cream. It is thicker and has a tanginess to it that will change the taste of your soup. But to be honest, we can’t think of many soups it wouldn’t work well in. We might not add it to a summer corn soup where we want the sweet corn flavor to really stand out. But Potato? Butternut Squash? Simple zucchini or asparagus? Tomato? Curry-spiced? Yes to all.
If you’ve already got a pretty thick soup on your hands, thin out the yogurt with some chicken broth before you add it, maybe getting it to the same measurement as for the cream in the recipe.
Here are two recipes that call for yogurt:
Creamy Leek and Yogurt Soup
Fridge Clearing Avocado Soup, which we mentioned and pictured above
What are your experiences adding yogurt to soup? Do you substitute it for cream?
Related:
Easy Garnishes for Simple Soups
