Carrot Coriander Soup
Ingredients
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 large onion roughly chopped
- 2 medium cloves garlic peeled and roughly chopped
- 3 pounds carrots peeled and cut into 1-inch pieces
- 1 medium apple cored and roughly chopped (don't worry about peeling
- 1 jalapeño stemmed, halved, and seeded
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 ½ tablespoons whole coriander finely crushed with a morter and pestle or spice grinder
- 7 cups low sodium chicken broth
- 1 bunch cilantro about 3 oz., stems attached, washed well, a handful of leaves reserved for garnish
- 1 14 ½- ounce can light coconut milk
Instructions
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In a large Dutch oven or soup pot, melt the butter over medium-high heat. Add the onion and sauté until soft, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and sauté for another minute.
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Add the carrots, apple, cilantro, jalapeño, salt, coriander and chicken broth. Bring to a boil them reduce to a steady simmer and cook, uncovered, until the vegetables are very soft, about 30-35 minutes.
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Add coconut milk and puree the soup with a immersion blender or a regular blender** until silky smooth smooth. (For less heat, remove one half of the jalapeño before puréeing.)
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If too thick, thin with a bit of chicken broth.
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Taste and season with more salt, if needed, and a generous grind of black pepper.
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Garnish with a few drops of creme fraiche, Greek yogurt or sour cream, thinned with a bit of milk.
Recipe Notes
This recipe makes a large quantity of soup. If you aren't serving a crowd, you can half the recipe or make the whole batch and freeze the soup. It's wonderful to pull out for an easy lunch at home or at work.
* If you're not familiar with coriander seed, it's actually the seed that cilantro is grown from. It tastes nothing like cilantro though. It has a citrusy flavor, often described as "warm, nutty, spicy, and orange-flavoured.1 ½ tablespoons sounds like a lot but it's not a strong taste, and along with the cilantro, is the main flavoring in this soup. You can find coriander, both whole and ground in the spice section of most any larger grocery store or online. I recommend the crushing the whole seed instead of using the ground as it's so much more flavorful.
** I love my immersion blender. It’s a real workhorse in my kitchen as I use it for all kinds of things. If you use a regular blender to puree any kind of soup, make sure to allow the soup to cool a bit before blending. This will prevent the heat from building up in the blender container and causing and explosion - not a pretty sight!