20 minute 5 ingredient Austrian garlic soup with foraged wild garlic

Super easy and quick meal to share today: A simple garlic soup, based on a traditional Austrian recipe, but made with wild garlic. The soup is called knoblauchcremesuppe, and the name is about 10x more complicated than making it, as the soup has a mere 5 ingredients and comes together in 20 minutes. 

Early spring wild garlic,
this is crow garlic

Wild garlic is one of the earliest and most important greens of spring. The vibrant stems and leaves start to poke up early, when everything else is dead and brown. 

That pungent garlic or onion flavor is actually intended as a defense mechanism, especially against herbivores. 

Early humans developed at taste for Alliums (the family that has garlic and onions) specifically because we were searching for nutrition after a long winter. 

Now, almost every culture on earth adds garlic and onion to a variety of meals. We plant and cultivate Alliums, so really the plants lost the battle but won the war. 

Anyway, while this soup in Austria is currently made with garlic bulbs, so comes out a creamy white color, it most likely started out as a green soup, like this one. Way back at its origins, this soup and recipes like it, were developed to take advantage of the nutrients in these early spring greens. 

Wild garlic, rinsed and chopped

Austrian wild garlic soup, knoblauchcremesuppe

8 cups wild garlic greens, or greens and bulbs, rinsed and roughly chopped 
4 cups chicken or vegetable stock*
2 cups whole milk (or vegan milk)
1 cup flour
1 stick of butter (or vegan alternative), divided
salt

1. 
   Melt a 1/2 a stick of butter, sliced, in a large stockpot. Add the chopped garlic greens with a sprinkle of salt, and sauté until softened, they won't be fully soft. 
2. Remove garlic and set aside. Add remaining sliced butter and melt. Add in flour and whisk until smooth.
3. Add in stock and simmer while stirring, till thick. 
4. Add in the sauteed wild garlic and simmer while blending with an emersion blender until as smooth as you like it. 
5. Turn off heat, but keep pot on the heat, add the milk while whisking constantly.
6. Remove from heat, season with salt and serve with croutons and/or sour cream. 

*I used "Better than Bouillon" roasted garlic stock

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