You might also like these recipes for African peanut stew and eggplant in peanut sauce. Some of my favorite food memories involve stopping at obscure restaurants on road trips, so ravenously hungry that anything tastes quite, quite wonderful. A peanut soup I ate at a hole-in-the-wall eatery on one such stop in Leesburg, Virginia, was so good, however, that I was dying to recreate it as soon as I got back home. The Virginia peanut soup is said to have descended from a West African recipe, and it has its own share of lore in its home state, famous, of course, for its peanuts. George Washington is said to have loved peanut soup, and it is perhaps one of the more famous dishes served in Colonial Williamsburg (that version is not vegan because it includes chicken stock, and I couldn’t eat it the couple of time I’ve visited Williamsburg). There are other restaurants and eateries in Virginia that have their own famous versions of this soup, but I doubt that any of them would taste much better than the soup I ate at that tiny restaurant in Leesburg. I used a recipe from the Washington Post and followed it fairly faithfully. The process was rather simple and didn’t require that much effort or time, save for soaking the peanuts in advance for about four hours. It’s important to use roasted, unsalted peanuts to begin with because the roasting adds more flavor to this minimalist soup. The flavor base has just a few ingredients, because you really want the peanuts to be the star here. Check to get new recipe updates by email.
One of the reasons I loved the Post recipe for the Virginia Peanut Soup is because it starts out with peanuts and not peanut butter, like many peanut soups do. While peanut butter in a soup would be tasty, the flavor of peanut butter is quite different from the fresh flavor of the roasted and ground peanuts in this soup. The soup is also a pretty, light color, although I will also add that in the photographs, for some reason, it appears whiter than it actually was. One of my favorite things to do is garnish this soup with all kinds of fun things that add more flavor and texture. The Post recommends apples and peanuts, but I also love chopped up candied ginger or even crackers (especially for Jay who loves a mix of all these in his soup). Although a peanut soup sounds rather heavy – and there are versions that use cream – this soup is surprisingly light at just 174 calories a serving. It is also full of protein and fiber because, let’s not forget it, peanuts are really legumes.
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