This carrot soup is a bit more work than my usual recipes, but the result is rich and delicious. I was inspired by an amazing soup I had at Chez Nico in Innsbruck, Austria a few years ago. The idea is to make it all about the carrots, and it has a simple premise: cook carrots in carrot juice, then blend. Besides making a silky smooth blend, a Vitamix works great for juicing carrots as well (with the help of a filtration bag).
Ingredients
2 Tbsp butter
1 medium-small onion
2–3 lbs carrots, divided
salt to taste (used ~½ tsp)
lemon juice to taste (used juice from ¼ lemon, plus a little more)
Makes 2–5 Servings. (Soup is rich and densely flavorful, so even a small serving is satisfying.)
Peel carrots and trim ends and coarsely chop. Juice ⅔ of the carrots (or, if you want a thinner soup, you could juice ¾ of them). To juice, blend this portion of carrots on high using tamper until the carrot mash starts to circulate. Transfer to filtration bag and filter carrot juice. (See my previous carrot juice write-up for more details.)
Heat a pot, add butter, then add coarsely chopped onion and sauté on medium heat for ~5 minutes, until softened but not browned. Add the remainder of the chopped carrots and the carrot juice. Bring to a boil, then simmer until carrots are soft, ~15 minutes.
Rinse raw carrot pulp from blender, then add hot soup and blend until extremely smooth, ~60 seconds. Season with salt and lemon. If you are careful, you can run the blender on low as you add the salt and lemon and carefully sample it with a spoon (just don’t drop the spoon!). This has the added advantage of removing bubbles from the soup.
I decided to skip a garnish, because I didn’t want any distractions. I suppose you could garnish with a few thin curls of carrot shreds.
If you want to go hardcore for the most delicate flavor, you can cut out the carrot cores, since they sometimes have a bitter flavor. I think peeling the carrots is sufficient though.
It’s been too long since I had Chez Nico’s original to evaluate how close I came to replicating it, but this soup sure tastes good!
