Carrot Ginger Soup

A while ago as I was doing my nightly browsing of tastespotting.com I decided to search for soup recipes and found this simple sounding carrot soup. It required few ingredients, little effort, and did not require too long to cook in terms of soup. I made a mental note to save the recipe and make the soup at some point but I never quite got around to it. Then, a couple of days ago, I found myself pondering over what to do with extra chicken stock I had left over and suddenly I recalled this recipe and my desire to try it out. As I looked in my fridge I saw that I had all the right ingredients, which isn't hard considering there are only five excluding seasoning and oil, so I set about cooking the soup.

The original recipe calls for using fresh ginger, which unfortunately was the one ingredient I was missing, but I did have ginger powder in my pantry so I decided to use that instead. Personally, I'm not the biggest fan of ginger so I was reluctant to use a lot in the soup. At first I was worried that I didn't properly convert the amount of fresh ginger into powdered because every time I opened the pot lid to stir the soup the smell of ginger was so overwhelming. However once the soup was finished cooking and pureed the ginger became a nice overtone and gave the soup a gentle spice.

When I finished the soup and served it to my brother I said to him "I don't mean to toot my own horn, but damn that's a good soup I just made". He tried the soup and he replied back that it was, indeed, "horn-tootin' good". The next day I brought it with me for lunch and a couple of my friends had a taste, each of them quite enjoying the soup. My mom, also a ginger skeptic, loved the soup as well and when I brought over a friend for dinner she liked it too. The soup was much more delicious and successful than I could have imagined and I don't think it will be long before I make it again.

Carrot Ginger Soup

• 1 large onion, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, diced fine
• 2 lbs carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
• 6 cups chicken or vegetable stock
• 2 tbsp fresh ginger or 2 tsp powdered
• 1 cup heavy cream or milk
• Salt and pepper
• Olive oil

1. Heat the olive oil in a large pot over high heat then add the chopped onions. Cook until translucent, about 3-5 minutes, stirring occasionally. 
2. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. 
3. Add the carrots and ginger and reduce the heat to medium. Cook for about 5-8 minutes or until the carrots start to "sweat".
4. Pour in the stock and bring the soup to a boil. Reduce the heat to low and simmer, with the pot covered, for about 40 minutes until the carrots become tender.
5. Transfer the soup to a blender in batches and puree until smooth.
6. Return the soup to the pot and add the cream or milk. Season with salt and pepper and bring the soup back up to temperature.