Carrot-Ginger Soup with Martha

Once I start talking about Martha Stewart's Cooking School, I'm not going to be able to stop. It's everything I had hoped it would be. Yes, it's teaching me things I've never known how to do (more to come on that in later posts), but more importantly, it's been helping me improve things I have been doing for years.

My recent carrot soup provides a perfect a case-in-point.

I have been making vegetable soup since college, when I bought a $10 enamel pot from the dollar store and a $10 hand-held blender from CVS. I would boil up vegetables, drop in the Knorr cubes, and whir the white wand in the veggies when they had lost all shape. The results were tasty enough to repeat again and again, but my soups were always very very thick, like baby food. With lumps. You could pile the soup into your bowl, and no amount of added water / broth made it any smoother.

For a while, I attributed the lumpiness of my soup to the handheld wand. But when I got a real counter top blender, my soups still ended up thick and lumpy even as I followed recipes to a tee. No more could I just throw together a pile of vegetables as I had to get to the bottom of this. I now measured leeks by the cupful, checked the weight of added potatoes or zucchini, added exactly the right amount of broth, and still the results were frustrating.

Then I opened up Martha. This is what leapt out at me: "Pass [pureed] soup through a fine sieve into a clean pot."

Why have I never read that anywhere before?? It's so obvious - that's when you know it is good advice - but it was also completely revelatory to me.

I had to try it immediately. Luckily, I had inspiration in the shape of a brand new home-made loaf of bread (thank you, J:):

I used Martha's general quantities - 1 onion, 1 inch ginger, 1 lb carrots, 4 cups of broth, and this is what I ended up with:

1. Fry 2 shallots and 1 inch of fresh ginger in 1 tablespoon of butter (I think this may be "sweating" them, but still not sure what that really means) until softened.

2. Add 1 pound of fresh washed chopped carrots and four cups of chicken broth.

3. Boil 15-20 minutes until carrots have softened, and then blend in batches.

4. Pass puree through sieve!


At this point, though, something was missing. Carrots can be very watery in flavor, ergo the soup was dull and watery-tasting. I added a pinch of cayenne which certainly added some excitement, but it didn't pull everything together.

I looked in my cupboard and saw the jar of molasses I had bought recently to make ginger cookies. I added 1 teaspoon, and the earthy heft of flavor and dash of sweetness were just the ticket!

I served with a dollop of sour cream, parsley, and some sumac sprinkled on top. But the cayenne and molasses were really the key here - definitely try this sometime.