Palak Soup Recipe: An Easy Indian Spinach Soup

Spinach is a leafy green vegetable that features highly in Indian cuisine. It is a cheap ingredient that is widely available, offers many health benefits, and tastes delicious. Just one of the ways that spinach is used in Indian cuisine is in a soup called palak, so we thought we would add a delicious palak soup recipe to our website.
Palak is the Hindi word for spinach, so the word is used to describe many spinach dishes. The term confuses some people, especially if they are more familiar with seeing the term saag on Indian restaurant menus. Although saag also refers to spinach and is used in this way on restaurant menus, saag simply means leafy greens. Therefore, saag dishes often incorporate spinach, mustard, and fenugreek leaves. On the other hand, palak refers only to spinach.
There are multiple palak soup recipes, and it is an Indian soup that is easy to adapt to your own tastes. Usually, a palak soup contains spinach, coconut milk or cream, and spices. All these ingredients feature in our easy-to-make palak soup recipe.

Useful Information

Ingredients for Our Palak Soup Recipe

• 500g spinach leaves, roughly chopped
• 1 can of coconut milk
• 3 tbsp butter
• 1 small onion
• 1 green chilli, finely diced
• 3 garlic cloves, finely chopped
• 1 bay leaf
• ½ tsp ground coriander seed
• Salt and black pepper to taste

How to Make Our Palak Soup Recipe

1. Add the butter and the bay to a large pan over medium heat on the hob and cook for two minutes.
2. Next, add the chopped onions, garlic, and chilli to the pan and cook for a few minutes until the onions soften.
3. Then, stir the ground coriander into the onions before removing the bay leaf.
4. Put the roughly chopped spinach into the pan and stir the ingredients together. Cook for two minutes until the spinach is beginning to wilt.
5. Pour the coconut milk over the other ingredients, season with salt and black pepper, and stir everything together.
6. Simmer for five minutes.
7. Either serve the soup as it is, partially blend to create a smooth soup with some texture, or thoroughly blend for a smooth soup with no lumps. I give the soup three quick blitzes with a hand blender to thicken the coconut broth while leaving the texture of the onions and spinach.

Additional Tips

• Mature spinach leaves are better than baby spinach leaves for the palak soup recipe due to their stronger flavour.
• Omit the chilli if you do not like the heat, or add an extra chilli to give the soup a spicier kick.
• Experiment with flavours by adding ingredients such as fenugreek leaves or ground cumin.
• You may enjoy our spinach and potato soup.
• Serve the soup alone or with some unleavened bread, such as a flatbread or naan.
• If you do not like coconut milk, you can use milk, water, or vegetable stock to create the soup.
• Those who like coconut flavour in a soup may also like to try our prawn laksa or Thai coconut and vegetable soup.