Fawnahareo’s Place

I wish I had the patience for food photography. There are so many wonderful blogs out there that make your mouth water just to read them because of the gorgeousness of the photography. And food should be beautiful, in my opinion, if it’s at all possible. When food is beautiful and then the taste is scrumptious, then you don’t have to wait to see if there’s a heaven after this life on earth.

I made an amazing carrot soup tonight. I know it’s bragging, and it was kind of accidental, but everyone who tasted it agreed.

So, I’d loved to have photographed it properly and presented it to you like this:

This roasted carrot soup picture looks totally awesome, and I bet it tastes divine, too. If you want to try making the soup pictured here, I stole it from http://beingsuzyhomemaker.blogspot.ca/2011/02/roasted-carrot-soup.html. Click on the pic to go there.

Instead, this is what I’ve got for you:

Beautiful colour, but not such an impressive picture. But you know you’ll want to make this soup.

The problem with carrot soup is that the flavour depends so much on the quality of the carrots. And let’s face it, in the middle of winter, a lot of carrots have become kind of bitter, bland, or otherwise uninspiring, when what you really want is sweetness, with just a hint of zing.

That, my friends, is what this soup delivered. Pure, sweet, carroty goodness. My method was the taste-test-add-taste-again method, but I’ll try to estimate quantities for you.

Heavenly Carrot Soup

• 3 tbsp coconut oil
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 5 or 6 large carrots, washed, unpeeled (so easy)
• 1.5 – 2 L water
• 1 tbsp savoury
• 1 tsp celery seed
• 1 – 2 tbsp salt
• 2 – 3 tbsp creamed honey
• 2 tbsp fresh-squeezed lemon juice
• fresh mint for garnish

1. In a large pot, melt the coconut oil. Add chopped onions and cook until softened. Some slight browning is okay. Just let them cook while you chop the carrots.
2. Discard the tops of the carrots and chop into 3-5mm circles. Probably you could chop into any size you want, but I wanted these to cook quickly. Add the chopped carrots to the pot.
3. At this point I also added three peeled and chopped broccoli stems that I happened to have hanging about. I don’t think they did a thing to the flavour, but you know, in the spirit of full disclosure here…
4. Add 1.5 to 2 L of water and bring that baby to a boil. Turn down to a slow boil or hot simmer. Whatever you feel like. I was impatient. Dinner was late as it was.
5. Add the savoury, celery seed, and salt. I used coarse sea salt because I ran out of the fine stuff. I figured it would dissolve anyway and it wouldn’t matter. I like to be kind of generous with salt, I admit it. Salt to your own taste.
6. Add enough honey to make the soup as sweet as summer carrots.
7. Lemon juice adds just a slight puckery zing to the soup that is otherwise just too sweet. Don’t add too much or it’ll just taste like lemons. Fresh-squeezed is SOOOO much better than the bottled kind. I happened to have some leftover from last night’s dinner (but truly fresh-squeezed would have been even better, as I find it starts getting bitter when it sits out). But, hey, even bottled is better than none at all.
8. After the carrots are cooked soft, get out your handy-dandy immersion blender (or transfer in batches to the other kind of blender) and whirl it all up until smooth(ish).
9. Ladle into bowls and garnish with fresh mint. Ooooh, yeah. Mint and sweet carrots are a match made in heaven, baby.
10. Michael had his soup as-is. Halia’s got the ice cube treatment. I added a splash of almond milk to the middle of mine. It was aaaaaalll good.
11. Enjoy!

Here’s a PDF version of the recipe if you want it to be easier to print: Heavenly Carrot Soup

Tags: carrot soup, carrots, dairy-free, Food, gluten-free, Recipes, soup, vegan, vegetarian