Simple Healthy And Creamy Sweet Potato Coconut Soup

This sweet potato coconut soup is so sweet, spicy and creamy that you’ll swear it’s a major indulgence. In reality, it’s completely healthy, totally vegan and the easiest thing to make. It’s a Weight Watchers and Slimming World favourite. It’s got all the flavour and none of the guilt!

If you’ve been around here for a while, you’ll know that I’m a pretty big proponent of delicately spiced Thai style flavours.  This simple soup is no different. With a scoop of Thai red curry paste added while cooking, this sweet potato coconut soup is quick, easy and completely vegan (if you make sure to use vegan curry paste).

If you don’t cook with curry often you’ll need to know a few things first. Like, what exactly is a curry?

Curries are usually a blend of spices that are often regionally specific. They come in powders and pastes and very in spiciness. Yellow the mildest, and green the spiciest. The yellow gets it’s colour from turmeric, the green gets it’s colour from cilantro and Thai basil and the red, from red chillies.

Sweet Potato Coconut Soup Step By Step

This soup uses a fusion of Indian and Thai influence.

Indian Influence: Sweat and infuse the onions with the garlic and chillies before boiling.

Thai influence: Use a tablespoon of homemade Thai curry paste for some aromatic spice and coconut milk for creaminess.

Once the onions and chili have infused add the sweet potato and then the vegetable stock. It all comes to the boil until the sweet potatoes are cooked.

Chef’s Pro Tip: Because hot foods blend better, puree the soup in a blender before you add the room temperature coconut milk to ensure that you get a really smooth consistency. This also has the added benefit of ensuring that you get the exact consistency that you’re after.

As you can see in the above photo, the soup when blended before the coconut milk is added, is a very thick consistency. More like a thick puree than a soup. Adding the coconut milk is what brings the sweetness from the sweet potato and the fragrant spice from the Thai chilli paste together.

I wanted to keep this soup really simple so that the Thai curry really shines through and so that it’s really easy to make on a busy weeknight, or even for freezer filling. With that in mind I kept the ingredient list pretty short:

• Onion
• Chilli pepper
• Thai curry paste
• Sweet Potato
• Vegetable broth
• Coconut Milk

But here’s the thing. This sweet potato coconut soup can be customized to be anything you need it to be. By adding just a few additional ingredients, this soup can become a filling and cozy main meal, or a veggie-packed “get well soon” soup. This is a quick list of ingredients I would add one at a time or possible altogether if I was feeling wild:

• Red lentils
• Spinach/Kale
• Red bell peppers
• Rice noodles
• Chicken
• Crispy tofu

As you can guess, there will probably be many variations of this soup in our life together. These all sound amazing, don’t they?! And when the base of this soup is so simple and freezes like a dream, then we’d be crazy to not have a batch of this sweet potato coconut soup in the freezer at all times!

The more I write about this soup the more I love it. It’s got so much going for it. It’s healthy and creamy, it’s freezer friendly and super cheap to make, and it can be a solid staple in the soup department, or it can be a stand alone dinner with some ingredient additions!

Have we just achieved soup perfection?!

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Print Recipe

5 from 5 votes

Simple Healthy And Creamy Sweet Potato Coconut Soup

This sweet potato coconut soup is so sweet, spicy and creamy that you'll swear it's a major indulgence. In reality, it's completely healthy, totally vegan and a the easiest thing to make. It's a Weight Watchers and Slimming World favourite. It's got all the flavour and none of the guilt!

Prep Time10 mins

Cook Time20 mins

Total Time30 mins

Course: Soup

Cuisine: Thai

Servings: 6 Servings

Calories: 447kcal

Author: Debs

Ingredients

• 1 medium yellow onion diced
• 1 jalapeno chilli pepper sliced (see note 1)
• 3 cups sweet potatoes diced (about 3 small/medium)
• 1 Tablespoon Thai red curry paste
• 3 cups vegetable broth see note 2
• 1 tin full fat coconut milk see note 3

Garnish:

• Chopped cilantro
• Olive oil
• chilli flakes

Instructions

• In a heavy bottomed sauce pan over medium heat warm the oil and add the onion and chilli pepper. Sweat for about 5 minutes, until the onion and chilli peppers are soft and translucent.
• Add the sweet potatoes and mix with the onions and chilli. Add the Thai curry paste and the vegetable broth. Bring up to a boil and reduce the heat to a simmer. Cook until the potatoes are tender.
• Very carefully place the potatoes and broth into the blender and blend until smooth. You may need to do this in batches. Once the soup is smooth place it back into the pan and add the coconut milk.

Notes

Note 1: Depending on how much spice you want, you can leave the seeds of the chilli pepper in or take them out. You can also choose to add another chilli pepper for extra spice.

Note 2: This is the perfect place to use a bullion cube of vegetable broth. This soup was made for quick and easy weeknight meals and adding boiling water to a stock cube is as easy as it gets.

Note 3: Before you add the coconut milk to the soup, place it all in a measuring jug and whisk it until it’s blended. Add some of the coconut milk and check for consistency. You may not need to add the whole tin. *Save a few tablespoons of coconut milk for the topping.

Note 4: This soup is perfect for freezing. Cool the soup completely and place into ziplock bags or freezer safe containers.