Creamy roasted eggplant soup and my review of The Ultimate One Pan Oven Cookbook

This creamy roasted eggplant soup is a one-pan-meal that is naturally smoky, piquant and full of deep flavours, and will put some zest into your soup routine.

Get this recipe and find many other hassle-free weeknight delights in The Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook - enter my giveaway for a chance to win your own copy! Please note that this post contains affiliate links - thank you for supporting the brands that help make this blog possible.

Jump to:

• This creamy roasted eggplant soup is a one-pan-meal that is naturally smoky, piquant and full of deep flavours, and will put some zest into your soup routine.
• A soupy affair
• Why I love this eggplant soup
• Roasted eggplant soup ingredients
• How to make this one pan meal
• My review of the Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook
• Storage
• Scaling this roasted eggplant soup recipe
• Adaptations
• When to serve this soup
• Win A Copy in Our Giveaway
• Recipe

A soupy affair

As soon as the temperatures drop, I find myself reaching out for my old trusted soup pot (find more soup recipes here). With a thick bottom and the ability to encapsulate aromas until the lid is removed and their potency is released into the air, perfuming your whole house, my soup pot is often the most-used instrument in my kitchen during fall and winter.

So you can imagine my surprise when the recipe for Julia Konovalova's creamy roasted eggplant soup from The Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook involved no use of a soup pot! Instead, this ingenious recipe, like all the recipes in Julia's cookbook, makes use of one main kitchen device: the oven. 

To prep this recipe, all manner of beautiful late-summer vegetables go onto a big cookie sheet: eggplants, tomatoes and bell peppers, joined by plump cloves of garlic. After a slow while in the oven, the entire pan is pulled out, its pungent smell enough to get you intoxicated long before you open the bottle of heady red wine that simply has to accompany this meal.

At this point, the vegetables are basically collapsing onto themselves, their deeply-charred flesh resonant with musky flavours. With minor handling, the roasted vegetables are transferred to a blender, buttressed by a bit of stock, and given a good whiz.

A generous sprinkling of smoked paprika, salt and pepper brings out the vegetables' deep flavour - and the whole affair is tied together with a helping of cream.

Why I love this eggplant soup

This roasted eggplant soup is a perfect soup to make in the height of summer, when all the vegetables are ripe - or in the dead of winter, when you're in need of some extra spice. It is:

• Light
• Easy to make
• Requires only one pan and the oven - no slaving over the stovetop
• Creamy
• Gluten-free
• Can be made vegan and dairy-free
• Can be made Whole 30 and Paleo
• smoky
• delicious
• special - the seasonings make it taste exceptional!

Roasted eggplant soup ingredients

• Tomatoes
• Italian eggplant
• Bell pepper
• Garlic cloves
• Olive oil
• Vegetable stock
• Half and half cream, or more stock for vegan version
• Smoked paprika
• Salt
• Garlic powder
• Cayenne pepper

Equipment

• Sheet pan
• Blender (or immersion blender)

How to make this one pan meal

Preheat oven to 400F. Prepare the vegetables by slicing them in half lengthwise. Remove the stems from tomato and eggplant. Remove the seeds and white ribs from inside the pepper.

Place all the vegetables in a roasting pan in one layer, cut side up, and scatter the garlic in between the vegetables. Pour the olive oil over the vegetables and lightly rub all over.

Roast the veggies in the oven for 1 hour and 20 minutes or until they are fully cooked and soft, flipping them halfway. When turning the vegetables, cover the garlic cloves with the peppers to prevent them from burning.

No need to peel the vegetables, but if you'd like the soup to have a smoother consistency, you can easily take the skin off the vegetables after they are roasted.

Once the vegetables are cooked, roughly chop them and place them in a blender with the stock. Blend until smooth.

Pour the soup into a pot and warm gently. Add the cream and spices, and mix. Serve with crackers and cilantro or parsley. For thinner soup, add a little bit more stock.

My review of the Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook

The recipe for creamy roasted eggplant soup is misleading in its simplicity, like the majority of Julia's entries in The Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook. Julia Konovalova is the brains and beauty behind Imagelicious, a blog initially created to allow its author to explore her obsession with food.

After having a daughter, Julia's style changed towards recipes she describes as "mom recipes" - requiring "very little time to cook or prepare. Or can be left in the middle if baby needs attention." My kind of gal.

It helps, of course, that Julia has an effortless charm and a deft hand with a camera and food styling, producing dishes that are not only stunning in their ease, but also in their beauty.

Her blog is full of little treasures - and to no surprise, her first cookbook is a perfect encapsulation of her style. 

Storage

This roasted eggplant soup will keep well in the fridge for 5 days. If you avoid adding any cream, it will last a whole week.

Freezing eggplant soup

This one sheet pan meal soup can be frozen for up to 6 months.

Scaling this roasted eggplant soup recipe

This recipe makes one 8 bowls of soup, or about 2 liters. You can scale it up by increasing the quantities of eggplants and other veggies, but because the recipe uses a whole eggplant, the least you can increase it at a time without getting into complicated math is to double it.

Adaptations

This roasted eggplant soup is low carb, gluten-free, sugar-free and keto.

To make it vegan, paleo or Whole 30, simply omit the cream and use more stock in its place.

When to serve this soup

This is a great soup to make on a cool day at the height of summer, when eggplant, tomatoes and bell peppers are at their finest.

It would also be lovely in winter, when you need some comfort food and soups are part of your regular rotation.

And don't let the ease of making this soup fool you - it would make a great first course for a Thanksgiving dinner, Rosh Hashana, or Passover.

Try the following dishes as accompaniment:

Win A Copy in Our Giveaway

The recipes in The Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook are everything Julia's blog is: approachable, hassle-free, and low on clean-up. Most involve one, two stages max, and all make proper use of the oven - the ideal tool for not only getting your food hot on the table, but your house warm at the same time. Each recipe is accompanied by a beautiful photograph and a whimsical write-up by Julia that lets you into her life and family.

Whether you're a busy mother, a harried student, or a passionate cook with a hankering for comforting, beautiful food, you will find something to love - and make! - in The Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook. And thanks to Food Bloggers of Canada and Page Street Publishing, you too can get your very own copy of it! Just enter the giveaway below for your chance to win.

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See more of what I made from The Ultimate One-Pan Oven Cookbook and otherwise on my Instagram stories, on Facebook, and on Twitter and Pinterest. The giveaway will remain open for one week, and a winner will be announced next Saturday, October 28 - so stay tuned on social media to find out! The giveaway is only open to residents of Canada and the United States.

I received no monetary compensation in exchange for this post; however, I did get a review copy of the book for a giveaway (after buying my own! This is how much I love it). I am proud to only work with those companies whose products I truly love. And as always, all opinions expressed here are my own; you can always expect me to be honest with you guys!

Check out my easy fall recipe: creamy roasted eggplant soup story to see how I make this sop!

Recipe