Vegan Clam Chowder

This past week my family and I were really craving a warm, hearty soup. So, of course, I turn to Pinterest. As usual, I was not disappointed! We found an amazing recipe for vegan clam chowder, and we immediately went to the grocery store to get the ingredients! Most of them were things you would probably already have, such as carrots, celery, potatoes, vegetable stock.. but others weren't. We got some raw cashews (because we had to soak them), and then an ingredient I had never heard of before- kelp flakes! That's where the ocean-y flavor comes from. Most of the time spent making this meal was actually in the prep. Thank goodness my mom and grandma helped me chop everything up and get everything measured out, it probably would've taken a lot longer for me to do by myself. My grandma soaked the cashews for a couple of hours, and then we blended the cashews with cashew milk (this recipe calls for unsweetened soy milk, but we thought the cashew milk would actually make it thicker and taste better!). You set that aside and cook the mushrooms next, separately, following the recipe. We used soy sauce and it worked great! For the main base of the soup we sautéed up the veggies and added the white wine (this really brought out a great aroma and flavor!) and flour to thicken everything up. We then poured in the vegetable stock and let it simmer for about 20 minutes, or until the potatoes were soft. After that, you add the cashew base and mushrooms that you set aside earlier, along with the last few ingredients to taste, and voilá! You have a delicious, thick vegan clam chowder. Of those last few ingredients are the kelp flakes which I mentioned. We actually also added shredded seaweed to ours and it turned out amazing. It had an ocean-y flavor without being too overwhelming. Another thing that we did that wasn't in the recipe are the croutons on top of the soup. We had some leftover hotdog buns that were going stale, so we tore them into little pieces, glazed them with an olive oil, oregano, and garlic salt mixture, and toasted them in the oven. I have to say this meal was amazing. We ended up doubling the recipe because we were feeding 6 people, and I'm so glad that we did! We all wanted seconds, and we had about two servings leftover, which were eaten the next day :) Visit the website below to see the recipe we used! Let me know if you use it and how it goes for you!!
https://veganhuggs.com/vegan-clam-chowder/