Sopa de Maní (Bolivian Peanut Soup) 🥣

Name: Sopa de Maní (Bolivian Peanut Soup)
Prep time: 20 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 50 min
Yield: 2-4 servings
Cuisine: Bolivian
Ingredients: 150 g peanuts (skinless); plus a spoonful of oil; 2 garlic cloves; 3 spring onions; 1 ají amarillo or 1 tsp mild chilli paste; 1.2 L chicken or vegetable stock; 1 medium potato diced (or 2 slices day-old bread, soaked); 80 g thin spaghetti broken short; or ½ cup cooked rice; salt; cumin; 50 ml milk to loosen; To serve: crumbly white cheese (queso de cabra/ricotta salda style); halved soft-boiled eggs; chopped parsley; a small potato or noodle mound per bowl

The Andean answer to peanut butter, and it arrived in a bowl: ground peanuts toasted into the soup's own base, thickened with bread or potato, poured over spaghetti or rice so the spoon stands up — that's the test. In Bolivia this is Sunday-lunch soup, born in the highlands and loved nationwide, its nutty depth built from ají amarillo pepper, spring onion and garlic bloomed in oil before the stock goes in. The crumbly cheese and hard-boiled egg on top aren't garnish so much as citizenship. Every abuela will tell you the store-bought peanut butter version is a different food entirely, and the soup is on her side.

Santa Cruz Department Bolivian ⏱ 50 min Medium

Method

1

Toast the peanuts in oil until pale-gold and loud-smelling, then grind to a coarse paste — some texture left is traditional.
2

In the same pot, bloom the garlic, spring onions and ají until sweet, 3 minutes; stir the peanut paste through and fry it a minute so the oil goes orange.
3

Pour in stock in a thin stream, whisking so nothing clumps; add potato (or soaked bread) and simmer 15 minutes until the soup coats a spoon — that's the thickness gate.
4

Cook the broken spaghetti right in the soup (or serve rice in each bowl), loosening with milk if it turns paste-heavy; season with salt and cumin.
5

Ladle tall, crown each bowl with a fist of crumbled cheese and half an egg — the Bolivian flag of this soup — and parsley. Served hot, eaten standing at Sunday's table.

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