The sink in my kitchen has a rule I learned the hard way: healthy dinner should never mean three pans and a mountain of dishes. If a recipe needs four burners, it doesn’t survive my weeknights. This soup needs one pot, one blender, and a bag of greens that’s quietly wilting in the fridge.
I first met this recipe through a green pasta sauce that went viral back in 2023. Chef Caroline Chambers says she’d gotten something like a thousand messages from readers who kept eating the sauce “like soup.” So she made a hella green soup. It does the same trick as that sauce: it takes a whopping pile of vegetables and turns it into one harmonious, creamy spoonful. No prepping for hours. No fancy equipment. Just the good kind of simple.
Why this works: Steaming the greens first keeps them bright and tender instead of soggy, and blending them into a silky base means every spoonful tastes like the whole pile of vegetables — without any of the “I’m eating a salad” guilt. The cream rounds it out, but it’s a small amount, so it stays feeling like a clean dinner.
I made a double batch the first time. My kids demolished it in two days and asked for it back. Make a double. Trust me.
About 40 minutes, start to finish — including chopping and blending. Serves 4 (or 2 of us for two days, which is what actually happens in this house).
Hella Green Soup with Garlic Toasts
Recipe reprinted with permission from What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make it Fast, by Caroline Chambers.
Soup
- 1 pound fresh spinach
- 1 pound lacinato kale
- 1 large white or yellow onion
- 2 celery stalks
- 2 Yukon Gold potatoes (about 12 ounces)
- 3 garlic cloves
- 1/4 bunch mint
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- Kosher salt
- 1 tsp ground coriander
- 1 tsp ground cumin
- 4 cups low-sodium vegetable stock
- 1/2 to 1 cup heavy cream (see vegan note below)
Vegan version: skip the cream and use coconut milk, or add 1/2 cup raw unsalted cashews when you add the stock. Same texture, different label.
Garlic Toasts
- 1 small baguette, or 1/2 loaf crusty bread, sliced into 4 pieces
- Extra-virgin olive oil
- 2 garlic cloves
- Flaky sea salt
How to Make It
- Set a rack in the center of the oven and turn the broiler to high. Trim the stems off the spinach and kale, rinse the leaves, and leave some water clinging to them — it becomes your steaming liquid.
- Put the spinach and kale in a large pot. If you’re using pre-washed spinach, sprinkle in 2 to 3 tablespoons of water instead. Cover and cook over medium-high heat until the leaves are wilted and the stems are softening (3 to 4 minutes).
- Use tongs to move the cooked greens straight into a high-powered blender. Repeat until all the greens are in. Blend on high until completely smooth (3 to 4 minutes). Pour the liquid back out of the pot and set the blender aside.
- Dice the onion, celery, and potatoes. Mince the garlic. Roughly chop the mint leaves — you want about 1/2 cup.
- Warm 2 tablespoons of olive oil in the same pot over medium heat. When it shimmers, add the onion, celery, and 1 teaspoon of kosher salt. Cook, stirring now and then, until softened but not browned (about 8 minutes).
- Stir in the garlic and cook until fragrant (about 30 seconds). Add the coriander and cumin and cook another 30 to 60 seconds until the spices wake up.
- Add the potatoes and the stock. Bring to a boil over medium-high, then lower to medium, partially cover, and simmer until the potatoes are very tender (15 to 20 minutes).
- While the soup simmers, make the toasts. Lay the bread slices on a rimmed baking sheet and brush both sides with olive oil. Broil until golden brown (1 to 2 minutes per side). While they’re still warm, peel and halve the garlic cloves and rub each one over the surface of the toasts. Finish with flaky salt.
- Stir the pureed greens and the chopped mint into the soup. Working in batches, blend the soup in the blender on medium-high until very smooth (about 1 minute). Return it to the pot.
- Stir in 1/2 cup of the cream, or more if you like it richer. Taste and add more salt if it needs it.
- Ladle into bowls. Serve the toasts whole, or break them into crouton-size pieces and float them on top. Bonus: for an extra-smooth, fancy bowl, strain the soup through a fine-mesh strainer and top with little dots of leftover cream.
Two Things That Save This Recipe
Use a real blender. A food processor or an immersion blender will struggle with this much green. I learned this the expensive way. If you’re blending hot liquid, never fill the blender more than halfway, and take the center cap off the lid before you start — cover the lid with a folded kitchen towel so the steam can escape instead of building up pressure that can blow the lid off.
Make a double. This freezes well, and a pot of this in the freezer is the difference between a Tuesday night dinner and takeout. I keep one in there at almost all times.
Trade-It Tip: No lacinato kale? Regular curly kale works — you’ll want to trim a bit more of the stems. No mint? A few leaves of basil get you close enough, and the soup still comes out great.
Caroline’s book, What to Cook When You Don’t Feel Like Cooking: Make it Fast, comes out August 11. You can pre-order it here if the title alone sells you, because it does.
If it doesn’t fit a Tuesday night, it doesn’t get published.