Vegan Broccoli Soup

Mid-July and the heat has arrived — the humid, relentless Long Island heat that turns the kitchen into a sauna if you use the oven, which means I am making cold soups and salads and anything that doesn't require me to stand in front of a hot box for three hours. I made a cold beet borscht — not Sylvia's hot borscht, which is a winter food, but the summer version, chilled, served with a dollop of sour cream and chopped dill, the color of it like liquid garnet in the bowl. Borscht is not glamorous food. Borscht is the food of women who had beets and needed to make something from them, which is the foundational principle of all Ashkenazi cooking: you have what you have, and you make it delicious, and you don't complain about what you don't have.

I drove Marvin to his card game on Wednesday evening — the gin rummy game with the men from the synagogue, his weekly appointment with normalcy. I waited in the parking lot for two hours, reading a novel — the new Philip Roth biography, which is too long and fascinating and makes me think about Newark and the Bronx and Jewish men who wrote about Jewish men with the obsessive precision of entomologists studying their own species. Marvin came out smiling. His friend Sol said Marvin won three out of four hands. "He still counts cards like a CPA," Sol told me. I drove home with this information stored in the place where I keep good news, which is getting more use than I expected and less than I'd like.

Noah is three months old and smiling — the social smile, the one that means a baby has decided that other humans are acceptable company. Jennifer sent a video. I watched it eleven times. I showed it to Marvin. He watched it and said, "Beautiful baby." He didn't say whose baby. But he said beautiful, and he meant it, and I filed the moment under "windows" — those brief, bright openings when Marvin is here, fully here, even if he can't name all the reasons why.

The borscht I make in summer is really just a philosophy — you have a vegetable, you have broth, you make it cold and beautiful and call it dinner. This vegan broccoli soup works the same way: nothing glamorous, nothing complicated, just the kind of thing you can make in the morning before the heat settles in and then pull from the refrigerator at noon, chilled and green and genuinely restorative. I served it the same week I made the borscht, and Marvin had two bowls, and sometimes that is all the proof you need that a recipe belongs in your rotation.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 25 minutes | Total Time: 40 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 large head broccoli, cut into florets (about 6 cups)
1 medium yellow onion, diced
3 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons olive oil
4 cups low-sodium vegetable broth
1 cup unsweetened oat milk or other plant-based milk
1 teaspoon kosher salt, plus more to taste
1/2 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1/4 teaspoon ground nutmeg
Juice of 1/2 lemon
Fresh dill or chives, for garnish (optional)

Instructions

Sauté the aromatics. Heat olive oil in a large heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the onion and cook, stirring occasionally, for about 5 minutes until softened and translucent. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more, until fragrant.
Add broccoli and broth. Add the broccoli florets and vegetable broth to the pot. Raise heat to medium-high and bring to a boil, then reduce to a steady simmer. Cook uncovered for 15 to 18 minutes, until the broccoli is completely tender and easily pierced with a fork.
Blend until smooth. Remove the pot from heat and allow to cool slightly, about 5 minutes. Using an immersion blender, blend the soup directly in the pot until completely smooth. Alternatively, transfer in careful batches to a standing blender, venting the lid to allow steam to escape.
Finish and season. Return the blended soup to low heat if needed. Stir in the oat milk, salt, pepper, nutmeg, and lemon juice. Taste and adjust seasoning. The soup should be silky, bright green, and lightly tangy.
Serve warm or chilled. For a summer cold soup, transfer to a large container and refrigerate for at least 2 hours until thoroughly chilled. Ladle into bowls and garnish with fresh dill or chives. A swirl of good olive oil on top is never a mistake.

Nutrition (per serving)

Vegan Broccoli Soup — Something Cold, Something Green, Something Made From What You Have