Hundred Clove Garlic Soup
Roasted Garlic Soup - Slow roasted garlic cloves with shallots blended with stock and potatoes for a wonderful winter soup. Served in a bread bowl!
Hundred Clove Garlic Soup
Jump to RecipeOnly after taking the above photo did I realize that there was a near hole in my bread bowl!
Don’t worry though. The levy did not break.
Ever since it has actually decided to be winter here in Colorado, Betsy and I have been on a big soup kick. Maybe this is because our house has poor insulation and, much like my father would say, I refuse to HEAT THE NEIGHBORHOOD.
So a good warm soup is the best way to ward off the chills on super-cold days.
You might think that this Roasted Garlic Soup is designed to protect from Twilight fans, but it actually has a pretty mild garlic flavor. Mild considering there’s a whole bunch of garlic in it I mean.
But trust me. It’s very delicious especially if you serve it in a big bread bowl.
Roasted Garlic Soup
- Serves:
- Serves 4
- Prep Time:
- Total Time:
Helpful Equipment:
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Slow roasted garlic cloves with shallots blended with stock and potatoes for a wonderful winter soup. Served in a bread bowl!
Ingredients
Instructions
1) Slice the tips of of the garlic heads and shallots and wrap them loosely in foil. Drizzle in a bit of olive oil and a sprinkle of kosher salt.
2) Roast the garlic and shallots for about 40 minutes until they are fork tender.
3) Let the garlic and shallots cool briefly and then use your fingers to pop the cloves out of the their skin. You can use a fork also, but hands are more fun.
4) Cube potatoes and add them to a large pan with the quart of stock. Also add the roasted garlic and shallots.
5) Cover the soup and bring to a simmer. Simmer until the potatoes are tender, about 20 minutes.
6) Use a blender to process the soup until it’s smooth. Some lumps are just fine.
7) Season with salt and pepper and a dash of lemon juice. Optionally, you can stir in some cream to make the soup more rich.
8) I like to serve this soup in a bread bowl, but you can definitely serve it in regular bowls also.
Roasted Garlic Soup
Roasting Garlic
As you can see, there aren’t actually that many ingredients in this Roasted Garlic Soup. The two ingredients that bring a lot of flavor to the party are the garlic (obv) and the shallots.
Of course, throwing in two heads of fresh garlic isn’t advised. So, let’s roast them.
Start by cutting of just the tops of the garlic and the shallot.
Wrap these guys in foil gently and drizzle in some olive oil and kosher salt.
Then wrap them up tightly and bake them at 400 degrees for about 35-40 minutes. This will make your house smell amazing.
If you’ve never roasted garlic before, it turns into an entirely different beast. Instead of a sharp flavor, the cloves just melt in your mouth with savory delicousness.
Once the heads of garlic are roasted, let them cool for a few minutes and then you can use your fingers to gently pop the cloves out of the skin.
For the shallot, just peel of the skin and roughly chop it.
You should get a lot of cloves, but maybe 100 is an exaggeration.
The Soup Body
While most of the flavor in the soup comes from the garlic and the shallots, the body of the soup comes from two other ingredients: stock and potatoes.
I used a few Yukon gold potatoes and scrubbed them clean and diced them up.
It’s totally fine to leave the skins on for this.
Add the potatoes, stock, water, garlic, and shallot to a large pot and get it simmering. Cover the pot and let it simmer for about 20 minutes until the potatoes are fork tender.
Blending Options
This is a soup that really needs to be blended so all the flavors meld together nicely. That said, you have a lot of options for how you blend it.
If you’re fancy-pants like me, you might have a stick blender that makes quick work of the job. I love this blender for soups because you can just blend it in the same pot.
If you don’t have one of those, don’t worry. You can just as easily use a food processor or even a normal blender.
Once your soup is blended, you’re pretty much ready to go. Just season it well with salt and pepper, grate in some Parmesan cheese, and if you’re feeling like it you can add a bit of cream to make it nice and rich.
The Bread Bowl
I love a good bread bowl, but I don’t think all soups are made for bread bowls. I don’t like really hardy soups and stews in bread bowls because it’s just too much.
This Roasted Garlic Soup was made for a bread bowl. The flavors end up being pretty light so it’s nice to have a sturdy side of bread to sop up all the soup with.
The bowl itself becomes this delicious roasted garlic bread. I had no problem finishing all most my entire bread bowl which is a feat!
If you’ve never made bread bowls before, it’s pretty straightforward. You want to find some smaller loafs of bread which you should be able to find at a local bakery without too much problem. I actually found these at the bakery section in my grocery store.
Just cut out the center of the bread bowl and then use your hands to dig out some of the inner bread to form a deep bowl.
Lay these out on a baking sheet and bake them for about 10-15 minutes at 400 degrees while your soup simmers away.
Then just ladle in some soup to each bread bowl and grate on some extra parmesan.
It really is tough to beat this on a cold winter night.
Of course, the bread bowl is optional. You could just as easily serve this in normal bowls.
If you do that though, I do recommend having plenty of bread or crackers on hand for dipping.
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Hello! My name is Nick Evans and I write and manage Macheesmo. I started Macheesmo 11 years ago when I was just learning my way around the kitchen. I love to cook and love everything food-related, but I have no formal training. These days I focus on fast, accessible recipes with the occasional “reach” recipe!
I’ve posted almost 2,000 recipes on Macheesmo. For each one, I do my best to give full explanations of what I did and tips on what I’d do differently next time. I’ll bring up the tricky parts and the easy parts.
I hope you can find something and cook something!
Oh… Heaven! I must also add that chopping the top off the garlic like that re-adds health benefits that are often lost in roasting garlic. The enzymes need to be exposed to air before cooking to provide the heart-healthy goodness!
Here’s a favourite of mine, if you want something a bit bigger than soup – http://www.foodnetwork.com/recipes/nigella-lawson/chicken-with-40-cloves-of-garlic-recipe/index.html
Didn’t know that about the garlic Becca. Thanks!
This sounds pretty good–especially the bread bowl part (because I’m a breadatarian). So what all soups do you think work in a bread bowl anyway? And since I’ll have to make them myself, would the no knead bread work to make the loaves for it?
I’m also totally a breadatarian. No doubt. I like thinner soups in bread bowls because the inner part of the bread bowl kind of starts to melt in with the soup and thicken it. SO stuff like this or tomato soup or cauliflower or broccoli soup. I wouldn’t serve like a thick beef stew or something in a bread bowl though. Just personal preference.
You could definitely use the no knead recipe to make bread bowls. I think you could probably get 3-4 bread bowls out of one recipe. Just make them smaller and bake them on a baking sheet or pizza stone. Should work just fine. Maybe I’ll plan a post on that…
I’ve definitely used the no-knead recipe to make bread bowls before. I got 3 bowls out of the NYTimes recipe, but they were also super small since I was using them as a first course. I also still cooked them in a Dutch oven but that was a pain in my butt since I could only do 1 at a time.
This looks really interesting. It reminds me of the recipe for aigo buido, but the roasting probably does good things for the flavor.
Yeah, I didn’t like aigo buido — way too bitter of that garlic flavor. This sounds much better :)
Huh… never heard of aigo buido until you guys commented on it. Interesting… I can see how that might be a bit much for me also… crushed garlic in water?
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this looks really good. i just had to say that i have the same type of plate as in the picture! lol :)
A bread bowl is never optional… haha :) Looks good. Might have to try it when I get back from San Diego… Colorado is going to be really cold after the warm weather there…
This looks incredible. Our winter has been off and on (I mean, it was nearly 68 degrees here yesterday) so it hasn’t been quite “soup weather” (although I believe there is no such thing) – but once that chill comes on, I know this soup is where it’s at!
Such an interesting difference from the French garlic soup we’ve made – the Auvergnois version that we make has no potato or cream, but does add pancetta, white wine (instead of lemon), egg yolks (for body instead of cream) and beef stock (instead of water). It also doesn’t require one to roast the garlic, but cook them in the stock for a long time. You then have to strain the soup – you wouldn’t believe the flavor. and it’s great b/c you get a really smooth consistency without having to puree it. maybe you could give it a try next time and tell us which one you prefer? Awesome pictures on this post and I love the idea of putting it in a breadbowl! We made this soup for christmas eve as a starter a few years ago. We didn’t tell anyone what it was and they couldn’t guess – they loved it!
If you’re curious: http://www.weareneverfull.com/garlic-soup-pure-auvergnois-peasant-food/
How long ahead of time can i make this soup? I may be using this as the soup course for my NYE bash and wanted to see if this will stay for a day or so in the fridge before reheating?
No problem at all making it a day or two in advance Brian. I thought it was actually better on day two.
Thanks for the quick reply! Will also be making the squash ravioli as one of the courses (and bread from a recipe found here) – it is practically a macheesmo sponsored dinner!
Made this soup a couple of weeks ago, as part of The Week of Josh for my husband’s birthday week. Trying to save some $$ so instead of big presents I made him a “Josh” meal every night for the whole week. He is a garlic fanatic (for reals — regularly can be found chomping on raw cloves of garlic, and makes salsa with an entire bulb of garlic in it), and he LOVED this soup. :) The only change I made was to smoosh it up with my potato masher at the end…a last minute decision as I eyeballed my blender and decided I really couldn’t deal with washing it out that night. :) Worked great, the soup came out almost completely smooth. Really, really delicious and I love how simple and budget-friendly it is too.
I love your blog.. very nice colors & theme.
Did you create this website yourself or did you hire someone to do it for you?
Plz reply as I’m looking to construct my own blog and would like to find out where u got this from. thank you
Hey Melinda!
My site has been a labor of love for the last 4 years or so… The most recent design was done largely by Lindsay at Purr Designs who is great plus a bunch of my own customizations…
Good luck! No reason not to dive in head first which is what I did. Start with something simple and tweak as you go! :)