15 May 2008


I know, soups don't photograph that well. But this is really good. It kind of looks like pumpkin pie filling before you bake it.


Jim saw someone making carrot soup on PBS and decided he wanted to give it a try. He couldn't remember the show, so he just did an online search for carrot soup recipes and found one on slashfood.com. The interesting thing about this recipe is that it gives the cook options. Four dairy options and three seasoning options. Jim actually used a completely different seasoning option that the ones listed. Here is how he made it:

Jim's Carrot Soup


Ingredients
2 pounds carrots, peeled and diced
4 cups chicken stock
1 medium potato, peeled and diced
3 tbsp olive oil
1 cup onion, minced
2 smal cloves garlic, crushed or minced
1/3 cup almonds, chopped
1/3 cup fat-free sour cream
3 dashed pumpkin pie spice


Directions:
Place carrots, stock, and potato into a medium-sized soup pot and bring to a boil. Cover and simmer on low for 12-15 minutes. Let cool to room temperature.
Saute the onion, garlic, and almonds in olive oil until the onions are clear. Towards the end of cooking, stir in the seasoning.
Puree everything together in a blender until smooth. (Can use a stick blender if you have one.)
Whisk in the sour cream.
Makes about 6 servings.

The original recipe called for the onion and garlic to be sauteed in butter instead of olive oil. The other dairy options given were: 1 cup milk, 1 cup yogurt plus a little honey, 1/2 pint heavy cream. And actually the sour cream option called for 3/4 cup, but 1/3 was plenty, we found. The other spice options given were: a combination of nutmeg, dried mint, and cinnamon, a combination of thyme, marjoram, and basil, or grated ginger. I would like to try it with the ginger next time.


The recipe also calls for 1 1/2 tsp salt to be added to the carrots and potato, but I don't recommend doing this if using regular chicken stock. We usually use reduced-sodium, but did regular in this one because we had it and needed to get rid of it.

As far as nutritional information goes, I did a rough estimate.
Per serving (one soup bowl full, sorry don't know how many cups)
Calories: 145
Fat/Sat. Fat: 3/0
Cholesterol: 6
Sodium: 800
Fiber: 4
Protein: 6

Cutting out the almonds would cut it down to 114 calories and less than a gram of fat per serving. I actually didn't care for the almonds in the soup that much. They kind of disrupted the texture thing it had going on. And if you skip the nuts, it would make lovely baby food! (Check me out; thinking ahead!)