Recipe: garlic soup with three bulbs (!) of garlic

Here’s something you didn’t know about garlic: people with alliumphobia are terrified of garlic, in ancient Greece a bride had a bunch of garlic and kitchen herbs as her bridal bouquet, and Buddhists aren’t allowed to eat garlic because it supposedly arouses carnal desires. Anyway, now we’re going to make garlic soup with three bulbs of garlic.

The trick to this soup is that you roast the bulbs of garlic in the oven. This makes garlic lose its sharp flavor and become soft, sweet and nutty instead. It’s inevitable that you’ll still smell a little of garlic around your neighborhood the next day, but in this one-and-a-half-metre society there aren’t that many people who will really be bothered by it – of course, you’ll feed this soup to your housemates too.

How to make garlic soup with three bulbs of garlic

• Preheat the oven to 160 degrees. Place the garlic bulbs on baking paper in the oven and roast them for forty minutes.
• Cut the onion into thin rings. Heat the butter in a pan and sauté the onion over low heat until translucent, about ten minutes.
• Let the garlic cool slightly, then add the peeled garlic cloves to the onion. The garlic will have become very soft and creamy; you can simply squeeze it out of its skin.
• Add the flour, bay leaves, cloves and thyme to the onion and garlic and cook over low heat for a few minutes. Then pour in a litre of water and the heavy cream and bring to a boil. Add the stock cubes to the pan and let simmer over a low flame for 20 minutes or longer.
• Remove the bay leaves and cloves from the soup. Purée it with an immersion blender and then press it through a sieve – this makes the soup extra creamy.
• Season with salt and pepper, if necessary. Sprinkle some chopped parsley over the soup. You can use the parsley stems the next day if you still smell of garlic: chew on them and the smell will disappear in no time.

Also read:

• Recipe: chicken with 40 cloves of garlic
• Garlic knots, super-fast garlic rolls
• The best tomato soup ever