Carrots- Not Just for Dippin' In Ranch



Photo by lillieinthecity via Flickr



Nope- no photo of the actual Curried Carrot Soup that I made the other night. We ate it way too fast to get pictures. So I'll use Lillian's photo of Carrot Soup, which has ginger. The recipe I'm going to share with you today doesn't have ginger. Sorry. But good news, it does have curry!

Before we get started today- I have chosen to "clean up" how I post. Tutorials are huge fun to work on and I love doing them but they are also time consuming. I don't have scads of spare time these days so I'll save the step-by-step photos for projects that would really benefit from such detail. That means unless it's something tricky, fun, or cool most recipes will be presented in a pretty straight-forward manner. Hope that's OK.

So-  let's get to the food!

I first got turned on to Carrot Soup after tasting my husband's at a favorite little bakery we like to visit. It was fabulous and right away I started researching and experimenting with Curried Carrot Soup. Most versions of carrot soup are fairly similar. My version of Curried Carrot soup is super easy and I hope you find it tasty as well.

You need:

3 tablespoons butter or olive oil- both are good
1 medium onion, chopped
2 pounds of whole carrots, cleaned, peeled, trimmed*
     You'll end up with about 1 1/2 pounds
2 cans of chicken broth- low sodium
1 cube of chicken bullion- I use the low sodium kind
1 - 2 tablespoons curry powder, depending on your tolerance for hot stuff
1/4 teaspoon ground cayenne pepper
Sea salt- about a teaspoon
1/4 cup plain Greek yogurt, optional but oh so yummy

*You can also use those cute little baby carrots but they will cost you a bit more. Just sayin'

Cut your carrots into about 3 inch pieces. Saute them with the butter and onions in a large Dutch oven until the carrots just begin to get tender. Add the remaining ingredients except for the yogurt. Simmer in the Dutch oven with the lid on for 15-20 minutes.

Puree small batches at a time in your blender or food processor. Careful- it will be hot! Once each batch is pureed, transfer it into a large bowl for safe keeping. See, you don't want to put too much in the blender at one time because when you hit the puree button, your ceiling will get a groovy orange tie-dye effect happening. Um, or so I've heard. Return the soup to the Dutch oven once everything has gone through the blender. Bring it back to a gentle simmer for a few minutes and then take it off the heat. Add the Greek yogurt and mix it in well. Once you ladle the soup into your bowls you can add a plop of yogurt. We have ours with a nice sturdy whole grain bread and a big honkin' glass of milk. Of course you can make this just fine without the yogurt but, again, of so yummy. And the yogurt helps cut the heat if you like a lot of curry.



Photo by roboppy via Flickr



I am not a big fan of cooked carrots but if you whirl them up with some curry powder, oh man! But I'm on a "curry bender" right now so even curry ice cream sounds good to me. No, I'm not pregnant.

Photo by tinatinatinatinatina via Flickr

I'm thinking that after all the years of gardening we've gotten enough of the rocks out of our garden patch to grow some nice straight carrots this summer. Mmmm- marinated carrots, hot pickled carrots, raw carrots freshly pulled from the soil.

Hey, thanks so much for visiting today. I hope you try the soup recipe and I'm always open to any suggestions for making it better. Have a great day and I'll see you again.



Carrot Moth photo by guppiecat via Flickr