Gordon Ramsay Broccoli Soup Recipe

Gordon Ramsay’s broccoli soup is a quick blended soup made with 2 lbs (1kg) of broccoli, cooked in salted water for 4 minutes and blitzed until velvety, then served with soft goat’s cheese and toasted almonds. It takes under 15 minutes and serves 4.

This recipe comes from Gordon Ramsay’s Make It Easy, where it appears in the “Great Fast Food” chapter alongside other recipes he designed for speed. In his Passion for Flavour, he explains the philosophy behind his broccoli soups: “The soup ingredients may look disappointingly bland, but it is the technique that makes this vibrant green soup so sublime.”

The technique that makes this work: he cooks the broccoli in just 800ml of salted water, not a full pot of stock, then uses that same broccoli-infused water as the blending liquid. The cooking water already tastes of broccoli, so you don’t need stock to build flavour. Less liquid also means a thicker, more concentrated soup straight out of the blender.

FAQs

Why does Ramsay use water instead of stock?

Most soup recipes start with chicken or vegetable stock as the base. Ramsay skips it entirely here and cooks the broccoli in plain salted water, then uses that same water to blend the soup.

The logic is simple: broccoli has a strong enough flavour on its own that stock would compete with it rather than support it. He uses this same water-only approach in his Passion for Flavour broccoli soup, where he writes that the ingredients are just “broccoli, water, salt and a little cream” and says it’s the technique, not extra ingredients, that makes the soup work.

Why only 4 minutes of cooking?

Four minutes is just enough to soften the florets while keeping them bright green. Broccoli contains chlorophyll, which starts breaking down once it’s been boiling too long, turning the colour from vivid green to a dull grey-brown.

The same thing happens to the flavour. Overcooked broccoli tastes sulphurous and bitter. Broccoli pulled at 4 minutes still has a fresh, almost sweet flavour that carries through the blending. If your florets are very large, cut them smaller rather than cooking longer.

Why goat’s cheese instead of cream?

The Make It Easy version uses no cream at all. Instead, Ramsay drops a slice of soft goat’s cheese directly into the bowl and pours the hot soup over it. As you eat, the cheese melts into the soup and creates pockets of tangy creaminess.

This gives you control over how rich each spoonful is. Stirring cream into the whole pot makes every bite the same. Leaving the goat’s cheese to melt gradually means some spoonfuls are pure broccoli and others are creamy and tangy. His Passion for Flavour version does use double cream (heavy cream) stirred into the soup, so he clearly sees both approaches as valid.

How is this different from his Stilton and pear version?

The “Broccoli, Stilton and Pear Soup” in Cooking for Friends takes the base in a completely different direction. Instead of goat’s cheese on top, he blends Stilton directly into the soup and serves it with a pan-roasted pear half sitting in the centre of each bowl, topped with toasted almonds.

Stilton is a much stronger cheese than goat’s cheese, so it dominates the flavour rather than complementing it. The roasted pear adds sweetness that balances the Stilton’s saltiness. The Make It Easy version lets the broccoli lead. The Cooking for Friends version lets the cheese lead.

What makes his Passion for Flavour version restaurant-level?

Three extra steps separate the fine dining version from this quick one. First, he trims the broccoli down to pure florets only, removing virtually all stalk. Second, after draining he puts the florets back in the dry pan to cook off excess moisture, which concentrates the flavour. Third, he pushes the blended soup through a fine sieve to remove any remaining texture.

The result is what he calls a “really silky, smooth, startlingly bright green purée” with “a glossy sheen and without even the tiniest lump.” He then serves it with handmade goat’s cheese and mascarpone ravioli. Same vegetable, same principle, but the technique gap between the two recipes shows how Ramsay scales a dish from weeknight to restaurant.

Can I add other vegetables to this soup?

Ramsay keeps this recipe pure: broccoli and nothing else. No onion, no potato, no garlic. That’s deliberate, because every extra ingredient dilutes the broccoli flavour and muddles the bright green colour.

If you want more depth without adding vegetables, toast the almonds in a dry pan until deeply golden before scattering them on top. The nuttiness adds a second layer of flavour without changing the soup itself. For a heartier version, his French onion soup from Bread Street Kitchen makes a good starter before a lighter broccoli soup as a second course.