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You may not agree with us, but whenever there is a chill in the air, all we want to do is cuddle up in a corner of our rooms with a cup of comforting broth. There is no end to the amount of tinkering that can be done here when it comes to creating a calming and pleasant soup of any kind. Feeling hot? Add more peppers. Trying to find a tasty way to eat all those vegetables? Bring them all to a boil in a single soup. Soup can keep you entertained throughout the entire day. Soups are not only very filling but also incredibly healthful when prepared properly.
You may use up a bag of forgotten carrots in your produce drawer by making carrot soup. The carrots cook in tandem with flavor-enhancing ingredients including fresh herbs, onions, and garlic before being puréed into a delightful soup that can be served for dinner or packed for a lunch. Although we enjoy the savoury flavour of chicken broth, chicken-flavored broth—which is, despite its name, vegetarian—is preferred to vegetable broth for vegetarian soups because of its robust, rich flavour and bright golden hue. (Vegetable broth will also work, but the colour might get darker.) It can be found with the soups in the natural foods department of most supermarkets and is occasionally referred to as "no-chicken" broth.
The simplest approach to achieve creamy carrot soup is to add cream after blending the soup. If you want to completely exclude the cream, using a powerful stand blender can still produce results that are light and creamy. Although you might need to blend it for longer, a standard stand blender also works fine. To avoid burns, remove the centrepiece from any stand blender's lid before using it, and place a clean towel over the hole. Although the soup will be blended using an immersion blender, the consistency of the finished product will be less creamy.
Ingredients:
1 tbsp butter
1 tbsp extra-virgin olive oil
1 medium onion, chopped
1 stalk celery, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
1 tsp chopped fresh thyme or parsley
5 cups chopped carrots
2 cups water
4 cups reduced-sodium chicken broth, "no-chicken" broth (see Note) or vegetable broth
½ cup half-and-half (optional)
½ tsp salt
Freshly ground pepper to taste
Method:
In a Dutch oven, heat the butter and oil until the butter melts. Add the onion and celery, and simmer, stirring occasionally, for 4 to 6 minutes, or until tender. Add the garlic and thyme (or parsley) and stir-fry for 10 seconds or until fragrant. Add carrots and stir. Add water and broth, and then heat to a vigorous simmer. Cook for about 25 minutes, until very tender, while reducing heat to maintain a brisk simmer.
In a blender, puree the soup in small batches until it's smooth. (When pureeing hot liquids, exercise caution.) Add the salt, pepper, and serve hot.
