Giada De Laurentiis Puts White Chocolate In Her Soup (Yes, Really). Here's Why

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Giada De Laurentiis is a compact and compelling force in the kitchen and in American homes. She leans heavily into her Italian roots to form her food point of view, spanning from her early TV show "Everyday Italian" that helped cement her place as a star of Food Network, to being a trusted source of Italian cooking tips for home chefs. That's why it is all the more jarring that her recipe for cauliflower soup with spicy salami in "Giada's Italy: My Recipes for La Dolce Vita: A Cookbook" calls for the addition of white chocolate.

Though certainly not a classically Italian pantry item, or a technique that she likely learned in her training at Le Cordon Bleu for that matter, De Laurentiis incorporates white chocolate as a secret ingredient of sorts to give the already flavorful soup extra depth, a creamier mouthfeel, and bit of nuttiness. The idea is not to taste the white chocolate per se, but to let it marry all of the flavors together and take the soup to another level.

Soup has a long history of relying on secret ingredients to make the whole tastier than the sum of its parts, and Giada De Laurentiis' white chocolate trick is no different. Whether it is a dash of hot sauce in a tureen of spicy tomato or a lift of lemon in your chicken noodle, soup is a willing canvas for amplifying layers of memorable flavor.

The white chocolate play makes a lot of textural sense for a cauliflower soup, in particular. By doubling down on the creamy angle, you bump up the velvety cauliflower as the star with a supporting and thickening role of the creamy white chocolate coming in subtly behind. Surprisingly, chocolate also has quite a history of working to meld flavors and textures in savory dishes. Whether in the flavor bomb of a mole sauce or enhancing the sweetness of lobster meat in Guy Fieri's lobster with white chocolate cream sauce, chocolate is a bit of an unsung savory outlier. Though we're not ready to toss white chocolate into soups writ large, it seems like De Laurentiis is onto something. Maybe give it a try, don't mention your secret weapon to anyone, and see how the reviews come in.