Okay, we want to be honest. Just saying the words “Cauliflower Soup” doesn’t necessarily excite most people in the room. When revisiting our old recipes on the site, Chef Jeff likes to strategize his rewrites by amp-ing up or tweaking the food with new products and blends we didn’t have the first time around, and by all means our Oaxacan Vegetable Seasoning elevated this dish and also visually enhanced the soup as well!

The Oaxacan region of Mexico is one of the more familiar regions of Mexico in terms of its culinary contributions such as hundreds of different Moles (pronounced “Moh-lay”) recipes and their rich chocolate traditions. Because of their preference to use local and regional ingredients in their cuisine, day to day life and diet of someone from the Oaxacan region would consume less meat- so in developing a sense of how a customer might use the “Oaxacan” rub, we considered how it would stand up to hearty and filling vegetables like cauliflower. We eventually settled on having the “vegetable” part right in the name because of how beautifully it was matched.

It’s a bit of a cliche for autumn, but there really is something about roasting vegetables that unlocks a whole new level of flavor. As they change color, roasting food (browning it) gives a visualization of the chemical changes taking place as the Maillard Reaction begins to change the proteins of the food and reduces their sugars so they can caramelize. By roasting your cauliflower with the spice blend, you’re creating new layers of flavor both by seasoning the vegetable, but also by strengthening its sweetness and complexity.

After roasting our cauliflower, it is introduced to the rest of our soup ingredients and blitzed using an immersion blender (you could also use a regular blender too, but Jeff prefers anything that results in less dishes). After your initial puree, some cold cubed butter is added to soup to help emulsify and unify the soup together, a French technique known as ‘Beurre Monte.’ If you wanted to make this dish vegan, you could opt to use a good plant-based butter, but try to avoid using anything that is very water-y or oily as it can make your soup taste greasy. This would be a perfect soup to enjoy alone with just a nice piece of bread, or alongside some ham or pork for a deliciously warming and satisfying fall meal!

Makes 4 servings.