I’ve been trying to eliminate waste in my kitchen, and using every last bit of my vegetables has been my recent obsession. I started keeping a freezer bag full of vegetable scraps – ends of onions and carrot peels, odd pieces of vegetables that I would generally pitch – to use for flavoring stocks. So when I made roasted asparagus the other night I was left with a pile of woody ends that I decided to boil and purée into a soup. The result is astounding – loads of fresh asparagus flavor and a silky smooth texture. An entire soup was made from otherwise garbage-bound ends, onion and a few pantry staples. The ends from two bunches of asparagus will yield about 2 large or 4 small servings of soup.
Despite its meager beginning, this soup is quite elegant. Serve it as a starter for Easter dinner, along with lamb and your favorite asparagus tip dish. Save a few asparagus tips to use as a garnish – it’s always nice to give a nod to the full ingredient in a puréed soup.
This soup makes great use of woody asparagus ends that would otherwise be tossed. Asparagus ends have great flavor and boiling the ends softens them enough to make a delightful spring soup.
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons unsalted butter
- 1 large onion, diced
- 8 large cloves garlic, chopped
- 2 bunches of asparagus, ends only
- 4 cups chicken or vegetable broth
- 2 cups baby spinach
- ½ tsp. salt
- fresh-ground black pepper, to taste
- 4 steamed asparagus tips (optional)
- Melt butter in heavy 4-quart pot over medium heat. Add onions and garlic after butter begins to foam. Sweat onions and garlic over medium-low heat until onions are soft and translucent, about 10 minutes (keep heat low enough to prevent garlic from browning).
- Add asparagus ends and cook until soft. Add broth and bring to boil, then reduce to simmer over low heat for 45 minutes. Remove from heat, add spinach and cool slightly. Using an immersion blender, puree until creamy, or puree in blender in small batches. Reheat soup over medium high heat until warm. Add salt and pepper to taste, and garnish with asparagus tips, if using.
Notes
If the soup is still hot when transferring it to the blender, open the center of the lid of the blender slightly, while holding it over the hole as the mixture is pureeing. This will allow the steam to escape.
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You must be kidding, this turned out horrible, bitter, yech!
Hi Mark – So sorry to hear the soup didn’t turn out well for you. Was the asparagus itself bitter too? Sometimes older asparagus can be bitter.
Made this today and it was awesome! I did add a Tbls of sugar while cooking ends to counter any possible bitterness. Also, I just add the spinach to the vitamix blender while blending the soup to keep the fresh spinach taste. One thing that is a slight bit unpleasant is the “hairy fiber” texture that comes from the woody asparagus ends. I think straining the soup would help with that. It’s 101 today in Texas and I’m thinking this could also be served as a chilled soup. Thanks for the recipe!
Hi Dana – Glad you enjoyed the soup and great idea to strain it to make the texture more smooth. Will try that next time.
I am a cook in a restaurant and was excited to make this soup with the leftover ends from our Mother’s Day menu. I tried to break down the fibrous stalks by boiling in the stock for over an hour, to no avail. Our commercial immersion blender was constantly bogged down by the fibers. In the end, I painstakingly smashed the stalks against the side of a China cap in order to extract what liquid and pulp I could. Flavor was spot on, but not worth the time. Anyone with a better solution?
Strain the soup using a jelly strainer and you will solve the fiber problem. Do this after pureeing, then strain and finish the soup however you’d like.
Hi Jaanko – Good idea to use a jelly strainer! Thanks!
Vampire repellant? You must be a major over major garlic lover. I love garlic, don’t get me wrong… But 8 cloves? Holy sh*t! I added 4 cloves on my initial run on this recipe and it was still a little much.
Henry – Haha! Not the first time I have been accused of going strong on the garlic (there’s a garlic salad dressing I make that my husband has dubbed “Dragon Salad” so I’m sure he’ll like your comment). My garlic cloves tend to be small but if you had big cloves 4 would be plenty. Thanks for the comment so others who make the recipe can see the modification.
My recipe for asparagus soup:
woody ends of asparagus – cut to small pieces
onion diced – to your taste (depends on how many ends of asparagus you use)
garlic – to your taste
carrot – sliced thin
small potato – sliced thin
whatever fresh veg you have that you would like to toss in
as much water or veg broth you would need to cover all
salt / pepper to taste with a light touch of cayenne
a little extra virgin olive oil splashed over top
cook until all vegetables are soft
place in your VITAMIX and pulse until creamy smooth
you may have to add liquid – veg broth or water
Didn’t want to provide quantities as you can judge. This can only work with a VITAMIX as asparagus is stringy with a less powerful blender. My soup always comes out delish!
Thanks for your recipe Valerie! Potato would be a nice addition and would make it creamier.
Gonna try for this variant, but starting with roasting the vegges to amplify flavor. Thanks!
Hi Fred- Would love to hear how it turns out after the roasting.
I made the original version for the first time today, and found it delightful. I may have gotten lucky—I had a bag of stems in the freezer for a few months, and they defrosted nicely—but it came out so smooth, w/ just shreds of fiber that, as jaanko suggested, are easily removed. Like Valerie’s idea of potato add. Looking forward to making this every time there’s extra asparagus stems!
Love the flavour, not so much the stringy bits, but will try straining it next time like suggested in one of the comments above.
I made this frozen asparagus ends and it was delicious! I added a carrot and a potato, and blended it with my hand blender. It turned out smooth with no stringy pieces and I didn’t need to strain. Wonderful way to utilize the ends instead of them going to the compost. I will be freezing the ends from now on for this recipe. Thank you for sharing!🙂
So glad to hear you liked this recipe and freezing the ends to use later is a great idea. It probably softens them up too!