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I can’t wait to share my favorite vegan potato soup recipe. It’s creamy, loaded with robust flavor and oh so comforting. No dairy, no problem.
This Autumn I’m sharing my family’s fav vegan potato soup recipe. It’s super creamy and actually filling. Potato soup is the ultimate comfort food in cooler weather and this gluten-free potato soup is no exception.
Table of Contents
Originally featured in my Autumn Cleanse Guide, this recipe is loved by the Simple Green Smoothies community and will quickly become a staple on your menu as well.
Vegan Potato Soup Ingredients
Here are the superstar ingredients that make this potato soup a cut above the rest:
- Coconut oil: This is my go-to healthy fat for cooking.
- Leeks: A gorgeous vegetable with a mild-onion flavor.
- Golden potatoes: Golden potatoes are the creamiest of the bunch. You can also use them in my Vegetarian Shepherd’s Pie if you have extras.
- Garlic: Use real, whole garlic for the best flavor and nutritional benefits.
- Vegetable Stock: Do you know how easy it is to make your own stock?
- Cauliflower: A not-so-sneaky way to add creaminess and more veggies to my soup.
- Nutritional Yeast: A cheesy flavor without the dairy!
- Kale: Used in crunchy kale croutons to perfectly finish off this dinner.
That’s it! I know soups are known to have lengthy ingredient lists, but not this one! I keep it short, sweet and delicious.
Pro Tip: Depending on the type of vegetable stock you use, your final soup may be more yellow (I’m talking cheddar cheese!) or potato-white. Either is fine. It just depends on what’s in that stock.
Gluten-Free Potato Soup Ingredient Swaps
Soup is a wonderful meal idea since you can swap in/out ingredients for what you have on hand. If leeks are hard to find, use a yellow onion instead. While golden potatoes are usually on-hand at my house, use whatever potatoes you want. Cauliflower can be swapped with broccoli (just don’t be alarmed by the color change).
While I love the creaminess this vegan potato soup brings, sometimes I like to switch it up and leave a few potato chunks in the final product. Or add some chopped carrots for something to chew on.
How to Make Delicious Potato Soup
For a successful potato soup, you’ll need a large pot as well as a heat-safe blender (or immersion blender). I love using a ceramic Dutch Oven to sauté the veggies before simmering them into a soup.
Step 1: Start by heating the coconut oil or cooking oil of your choice in the large soup pot. Add the chopped leek and a pinch of salt to sauté.
Step 2: After the leek softens, add the minced garlic and sauté, stirring constantly. Garlic burns easily, so make sure you continue to stir the garlic while it browns to avoid burning.
Step 3: Since the cauliflower and potatoes will take about the same time to cook, add them both in next along with the vegetable stock. Once the pot is simmering, turn the heat down to keep it on a low simmer until everything is fork-tender. Adding a lid at this stage helps the vegetables soften faster as well as keep the flavors locked in.
Step 4: Remove the soup pot from the stove and on to the fun part! Check that your blender container can handle hot items (my old Vitamix couldn’t but my new one can), or decide if you want to use an immersion blender. The soup will be hot, so be careful. You may need to add a bit more vegetable stock at this step to help the soup blend nicely and still keep a soup-like consistency.
If I want some potato or cauliflower chunks in my soup, I’ll save a few and add them into the pot after I blend. Then I return the pot to the heat and cook for about ten minutes to soften the veggies. Now on to the best part… the kale croutons!
Crunchy Croutons
You can enjoy your beautifully fragrant potato soup at this point, but I strongly suggest giving these simple kale croutons a try. They are that good.
Step 1: While your soup is simmering, tear the kale into large pieces after removing the stems.
Step 2: Mix with melted coconut oil, Dijon mustard and sea salt until all the leaves are well coated. This gets a bit messy but is worth it.
Step 3: Bake at 300°F for 20-25 minutes, or until the kale is crispy. My croutons often firm up a bit more after removing from the oven if I keep them on the baking tray for a few minutes. This way I don’t over-cook them.
Topping this gluten-free potato soup with kale croutons keeps out the often inflammatory gluten but also provides quite a lovely burst of flavor.
Vegan Potato Soup FAQs
My vegan potato soup uses cauliflower to make it cream up during blending without needing any dairy.
No need! They will cook down nicely in the simmering stock mixture, so pre-soaking is an unnecessary step.
I use golden potatoes since they are the creamiest variety in my opinion, as well as cauliflower that creams up nicely when blended. Cauliflower adds another vegetable to your soup without adding any overpowering flavors.
More Autumn Soup Recipes
I love fresh Autumn produce, and what better way to use them than in warm soups? Here are a few of my go-to recipes this season:
- Tortilla Soup: This surprising soup is fun to make and enjoy with the toppings of your choice.
- Vegetable Noodle Soup: My take on a plant-based chicken noodle soup. All the flavor without the meat.
- Creamy Tomato Soup: The perfect soup for kids and adults alike, loaded with veggies.
- Carrot Ginger Soup: Probably my favorite lunch soup!
Don’t forget to rate + review this recipe once you’ve made it!
Vegan Potato Soup
Ingredients
For Vegan Potato Soup:
- 2 tbsps coconut oil
- 2 leeks white part thinly sliced
- 4 gold potatoes chopped
- 4 garlic cloves minced
- 4 cups vegetable stock
- 1 ½ cups cauliflower chopped
- dash sea salt
- dash ground black pepper
- dash nutritional yeast
For Kale Croutons:
- 2 cups kale tough stems removed
- 1 tbsp coconut oil
- 1 tsp Dijon mustard
- ¼ tsp sea salt
Instructions
- Heat coconut oil in a large pot, Add the leek and a pinch of salt.
- Once the leeks start to soften, add the garlic and sauté for 1 minute.
- Add the vegetable stock, potatoes and cauliflower and bring to a simmer.
- Cook until cauliflower and potatoes are tender. While the soup is cooking, prepare the Kale Croutons.
- Remove soup from heat and puree using an immersion blender or standard blender (Use caution when blending-soup will be hot!). If soup is a little too thick, add a little more vegetable stock.
- Ladle into bowls and top with Kale Croutons. Season with salt, pepper and nutritional yeast.
For Kale Croutons:
- Tear kale into large pieces.
- Mix with remaining ingredients.
- Bake at 300°F for 20-25 minutes or until kale is crispy.
Equipment
- dutch oven
- heat-safe blender
Notes
- To keep sodium levels lower, use low-sodium vegetable stock (or make your own!).
- Swap leek with 1 yellow onion.
- To create a chunkier soup, dice 1 extra potato and 2 carrots. Add to the large pot after blending and simmer the soup for 10 more minutes, or until vegetables are tender to your liking.
Oh I was so pleasantly surprised.! I thought I would miss that creamy touch of cream and butter which I always add to potato or cauliflower soup. But no this was just amazing ! The leaks , which I have never ever used brought it all together. The croutons were fun to make and very tasty! I definitely have added this recipe by favorite soups❤️
Delicious, easy and loved by the whole family! Love the kale chip addition!
I loved how easily this soup came together! As a busy mom, I love easy, wholesome dinner recipes that turn out deliciously—and this is one of them!
Really liked this – found that it needed quite a bit of nutritional yeast to give it a ‘cheesy’ kick. Favorite part was the kale chips either by themselves or when they slightly softened in the soup. Yum!
It’s a decent recipe – you really can’t go too far wrong with potatoes, leeks and cauliflower. The kale “croutons” were delicious, really just kale chips – but you must have them on the side; once they’re dunked into the soup, they just become soggy, tough kale blobs.
I made it in the instant pot and pressure cooked for 10 minutes.
It was simple to make and very delicious! Love it!
Thank you for the recipe!
It’s not quite fall soup weather yet in Tucson, Arizona (95°), but we did it! I must say, as a long time lover of traditional potato soup, I was skeptical since the recipe contained no butter, cream or cheese! It is really very good. I made it exactly as the recipe, except Instacart forgot my leeks, so we had to do onions. Delicious! I’ve read the recipe several times and am not seeing what you do with the nutritional yeast. Add it while cooking? Or just for topper, which is what we did. I’ve never COOKED with nutritional yeast, so wasn’t sure. Also, I appreciated the tip about putting hot liquid in my vitamix. We have a new one also (A3500), but Vitamix says, on their site, nothing over 170°. So I let it cool some. That worked out fine bc I was serving it later anyway, but I’d appreciate any clarification you may have on whether I can do that the next time. My husband with Parkinson’s is now on a pureed diet, so I’m excited to learn how to make more delicious, nutritious and caloric foods for him. (We owned a Vitamix 25+ years ago and did much plant based, raw foods.) Today I served Dave a half cup of the soup and added a tablespoon of butter. He loved it. (Another long time potato soup fan.) Put in more chunky stuff for me. Thank you for the challenge!
The soup was good. Next time I would add some carrot for a bit of sweetness and I would use a bit less garlic as I used med sized cloves and my husband found it too garlicky. The nutritional yeast does add a nice cheesy flavour. Thanks
Hi Debra,
If you like a chunkier soup, this recipe is great chunky or pureed! So totally feel free to try it chunky next time.
I tend to add nutritional yeast, both, while cooking and/or as a topping. Either way will work fine! 🙂
This soup could be called “comfort soup”! Just the right touch of filling and light (I have no idea how that is possible). I omitted the kale croutons and did not miss them at all – I made up for the greens in a smoothie! Highly recommend this recipe!
Added some celery to the leeks, baked the potatoes, left some small diced, added dried rosemary and dill. It’s a keeper!
Tasty and easy. Loved the kale croutons!
The soup was rather bland, needs a little more seasoning otherwise it was really good.
So creamy and good. The kale croutons are a delicious addition. We also used some turkey bacon crumbles as a topping. The family loved it.
This soup was delicious. I chopped everything small and decided not to puree it. I like pureed soups, but wanted more texture this time around. My whole family loved it.
Not a fan of the kale chips. I’d really like it if the measurements were more precise. We bought a bag of golden potatoes. Sizes ranged from small to large in the bag. It would help to know how much in weight or cups of diced potatoes. The soup was very thick even with adding a little more water at the end.
Very tasty and filling! Perfect for the cool temperature!
Loved the kale croutons! Soup is tasty and hearty!