How to Make (and Reheat) Soup in the Vitamix Ascent X5
There are a lot of fantastic settings you can use on the Vitamix Ascent X5 , but one of my favorites is the soup setting ( the nut butter setting is a close second). If you didn’t already know, it’s not just for blending already-cooked soup. Indeed, you can cook using a blender. It may take you a while to wrap your head around this idea, but I personally had to see it for myself to be completely convinced. Here’s how to do it.
How to make soup in a blender?
It turns out that if you have a powerful enough motor, you can create enough friction with the blender blades to heat several pints of liquid ingredients until they reach cooking temperature (140 to 190°F) and release the steam completely. Although you’re not cooking over a fire, you do have a heat source, and the ingredients are cut into such tiny pieces that they only take a moment to cook once they reach the right temperature.
Not all blenders have this feature. I’ve heard of horrifying cases of soup flying out of blender containers or blades wearing out at high speeds, but all Vitamix blenders are equipped to run on speed 10 (the highest speed) for more than seven minutes at a time. And this is exactly what you need to bring the soup to cooking temperature.
If you’ve been wanting a Vitamix but haven’t wanted to shell out the cash, check out the company’s surprisingly good Mother’s Day sale. For more information on the Vitamix Ascent X5, read my full review here or check out the more affordable Explorian E310 .
How to Use the Soup Feature on the Vitamix Ascent X5
Making soup right in your Vitamix is easy. The only thing you need to know is that you can’t make adjustments on the fly. You’ll have to wait until the blender completes the soup’s seven to eight minute cycle before tasting it and adjusting the seasoning and consistency.
1. Load the blender
Place ingredients in blender container. I’ve made tomato soup, broccoli soup, and potato soup in the Vitamix and tried recipes that use all raw ingredients, all cooked ingredients, and mixtures of precooked and raw ingredients. Keep in mind that a blender essentially grinds your ingredients, so you may want to add flavor by pre-cooking some of your ingredients. Roast some tomatoes before adding them, sauté some broccoli, or sauté some onions before throwing them in the blender. Today in tomato soup I roasted charred tomatoes but left the onions and garlic raw. Another day I might do the opposite.
In addition to the bulk of the soup, be sure to add enough liquid. This seems logical, but you’d be surprised how quickly fibrous vegetables can make a soup mixture too thick to blend well. Keep a measuring cup of broth nearby so you can pour it through the hole in the lid if needed. (More on setting consistency in a moment.)
2. Navigation through presets
Place the container on the base, turn on the Vitamix and click the menu button on the left. Looks like three horizontal lines. Once here, turn the round dial to find an image that looks like a steaming soup bowl with a small spoon underneath it.
Make sure the lid is tightly closed, then press the start button on the right side. The Vitamix will start at low speed and increase to speed 10 (the highest and loudest speed) for the first 30 seconds or so. Your work here is finished.
The Vitamix will cook the soup in just over seven minutes. When I went to measure the temperature of my tomato soup today, when I took the lid off, a thick plume of steam came out. The soup temperature was 179°F at the sides of the container and up to 186°F near the paddles.
Adjusting consistency
Once the soup is ready, you may want to adjust its thickness or thinness. It’s easier to thin the soup than to thicken it after it’s ready. With this in mind, before you start cooking, try to add a little less liquid than the recipe calls for, and then you can always add water or broth to the mixture later.
If your soup is too thin, you can add aquafaba , a spoonful of canned cannellini beans, or even a couple spoonfuls of leftover mashed potatoes . Turn the blender back on high speed until smooth; there is no need to do a full cycle of the soup again unless you add a raw ingredient.