Recipe: Carrot Ginger Soup

by Shannon Turner
January 21, 2011

Lately I've had the wisdom-tooth blues, so I've been eating a lot of soft, easy to chew foods.  Soups are my favorite foods to go to because they can really run the gamut depending on what you're looking for in the moment.  Soups can be hearty or brothy, packed with lots of goodies or simple and easy to put together.  Best of all, they're easy to make and don't take a lot of time or effort to put together.

Today's soup recipe isn't entirely from scratch; I'm cheating a little bit by using a pre-packaged broth to help get the soup going a little sooner.  Actually, one thing I love to do is take a canned soup and jazz it up.  With a few quick steps, you can take a boring can of soup and make it into a really special meal!

Shopping List:
Carrots
Fresh Garlic
Onion
Fresh Ginger Root
Cauliflower
32 oz. Low Sodium (if available) Carrot-Ginger Soup base
Olive Oil
Garlic Salt
Black Peppercorns (if you have a grinder or pepper mill for them, if not - Ground Black Pepper works)

For the soup base, you'll need:
1/4 cup chopped fresh ginger, separated into two 1/8 cups
6 Carrots, chopped (I prefer not to peel the carrots, as the soup will be more flavorful)
4 cloves fresh garlic, minced
1/2 an onion, diced
2 TBSP Olive Oil in a large soup pot
32 oz Low-Sodium Carrot-Ginger soup base
32 oz purified water (The taste difference over tap water is huge.  On the right in the adbar, I've linked to a bunch of water filtration systems that are very affordable.  I use them in all my cooking.)

Heat your olive oil on medium-low.  Sautee the diced onion for 4 minutes, then add the minced garlic.  Sautee for another 2 minutes, stirring often enough that your garlic won't brown or burn.

Add your carrots and 1/8 cup of the ginger and sautee for 4 minutes.  Once that's done, add your soup base.  One trick I use to get the last bits of flavor out of the soup base container is I fill up the container with the purified water, shake it up, and pour it into the pot.

The best thing about this soup is you're pretty much done now. Chop your cauliflower and add it to the soup. Add the remaining 1/8 cup of ginger to the soup. Simmer for at least 30 minutes and it's ready to eat.

Like most soups, it'll taste even better the longer you let it simmer - and soups the next day are always delicious. To add a little more substance to this soup and make it meal-perfect, I poured it over a bed of cooked black lentils. See below:

While your soup is simmering, measure out the following ingredients:
1 cup of french (black) lentils, rinsed
2 cups of filtered water
Add your lentils to a medium-size pot along with 2 cups of water.  Let your lentils simmer on medium heat for about 20-35 minutes (a big range, but it depends on your stove), or until soft. When there's no water left in the pot, your lentils are done. Don't let them burn!

For more flavorful lentils, you could substitute out the water you add to the lentils for vegetable stock (See previous recipe, opens in a new window.  Do only the "For the soup base" section.), or add a little garlic, onion, and olive oil to the mix while it's cooking.

To make this soup extra thick and hearty, you could blend some of it and put it back into the pot. You can use an immersion blender if you like, but I prefer to measure out the soup, blend it, then return it to the pot so I can get a better feel for how much I've actually blended.

Depending on how thick you like your soup, I recommend blending between 1/3 and 1/2 of the soup. If you're making this (or other soups) for someone who has recently had a wisdom tooth removed or other dental work, you can blend the whole thing, although the carrot will be soft enough if you let the soup simmer for at least 2 hours.

When you serve this soup, crack some fresh black pepper over the top and season with a touch of garlic salt. Enjoy!