— Roasted Carrot Soup —
The Final Product That You Will Eat This Until You Puke
The Final Product. You Will Eat Bowl After Bowl After Bowl Of This Until You Puke

The idea that I am now officially in my late 30s and started wearing glasses within the past five years means that I have to start paying more attention to eating things that are good for my failing eyesight. Vitamin K is my special friend, and carrots are one of the better sources of it as well as about a million other god-for-you nutrients.This Is Roughly What You Are Gonna Need
This Is Roughly What You Are Gonna Need

Plus if you eat a lot of carrots, your piss changes color! Same with beets, except that with beets you may have this experience that if you forgot that you ate a lot of beets and then wake up and take a leak, you might think you are bleeding internally. This is funny… to other people… like the ambulance driver and the doctors and nurses in the emergency room.

This is a soup I thought up because I really, really like carrots. You’ll want to eat this with good baguette and white wine. The latter is optional, so what I decided to do is justify having white wine on hand by making it a non-optional part of this recipe. Clever, huh?

Oh, before you make this I should tell you that you will need a blender. I Am a Great Grater
I am a Great Grater
Not a food processor, but a blender. If you don’t have a blender, don’t make it. Also, if you have a blender that has a plastic blending container, this recipe will stain the hell out of it as you’ll be pureeing roasted carrot lava. It boils down to this: you’ve been wanting to get yourself that really nice glass blender. This is an excuse to buy yourself a lil’ old present.

What You’ll Need

These are your ingredients. Note that I am being uncharacteristically specific in measurements. This is because I am writing this WHILE I make it rather than after the fact and after I have has too much cheap hooch. Again, clever, huh?

Oh, hey… fire up your oven to 375°

  • 4 pounds carrots
  • 5 cloves garlic
  • 1 onion
  • 64 oz. Chicken Broth
  • 1/2 pint whipping cream
  • 8 oz butter
  • tarragon
  • pepper
  • salt
  • olive oil

So here’s what you do.
Chopped, Tossed, and Ready To Bake
Chopped, Tossed, and Ready To Bake

Step 1 – Roasting Carrots and Garlic

There are a few things I know I am really good at. One of those things is peeling carrots. Another is Scrabble. I am a hellagood Scrabble player. The peeling carrots part is a bonus today as I have to (as do you) peel four pounds of carrots. I use one of the old school potato peelers. There is this school of thought that you should have one peeler for potatoes, another for carrots, another for turnips, etc. I call bullshit on that. You only need one damn peeler, and the ghetto cheap old school steel peeler is the way to go. Hell, it isn’t even stainless steel, which is why it only costs 78¢, I suppose. When it rusts, get a new one.

Anyway, peel all your carrots… Scrabble has nothing to do with this.

Then chop them into 1 inch segments. They need to be short and stubby (snicker) as they will eventually go through a blender to be liquefied.

Out of the Oven
Out of the Oven
Once the carrots are peeled and chopped, throw them into a bowl. Add your garlic cloves and a bit of olive oil and toss to coat. Throw them on a pan and sprinkle with salt. Put them in the oven and grab a glass of wine as they’ll be in there until roasted and soft: 60-90 minutes.

Oh, and hey… pay attention to this noise. I live in Tucson, AZ, where it is dry. Today the humidity was like negative 12%. Toss some water on the stuff if it looks like it is “drying out” rather than “roasting.” If you live somewhere like Seattle, disregard this note.

Step 2 – Sautee some stuff

Chop up your onion. Toss it in a pot with your butter. Sautee until brown. Simple!
Pre-Puree
Pre-Puree. Ain’t My Blender Sexy?

Once it’s brown, toss in a cup of white wine and let it cook down a bit. The white wine both deglazes the pot and adds a bit of sweetness into the final result. I suppose you could use a half a up of the skanky white vermouth you have rotting in the cupboard as well. Yeh… that would work. Oh, hey… drink the rest of the wine.

Step 3 – Puree-o-Rama!

Okay. Got a big metal bowl? Grab it. If you don’t have one, you’re kind of screwed. Figure it out. Dump your carrot/garlic mix and your onions into a big bowl. The point is that you want to free up your pot.

Using your blender, puree the hell out of everything, using chicken stock as the liquid medium you’re pureeing with. Do this in batches, dumping it into your pot until all is smooth like Isaac Hayes… before he became a crazy Scientologist.

Oh, and scroll up to your ingredients. Mid-Puree
Mid-Puree
Notice I don’t go overboard with the garlic. If you are one of those people who think that the primary flavor in food should be garlic then make your ingredient list have 12 cloves of garlic. Then again, if you are one of those folks who want to taste garlic over any other flavor, you didn’t read this recipe trough before cooking it. I know how your type thinks. Go sob to the waiter at The Stinking Rose.

Step 4 – Making it Taste Good

So now you need to add tarragon to taste, cream, and maybe a bit of liquid if you think it is too thick. Let it cook at least 20 minutes to release the flavors in the tarragon, which is a damn fine herb and, as an aside, will knock your socks off if you ever add it to tuna salad. Really, this is something you would probably never think of but is freakin’ fantastic!

Add pepper and salt to taste and let it heat through. Dump in your whipped cream… heat it some more! If it is too runny, reduce it until it ain’t. If it is too viscous, add some water or more stock or vodka or something “wet.” Damn this is gonna taste good!

Step 5 – Plate

Adding Spices and Cream
Adding Spices and Cream. Stir, Stir, Stir…
Plating soup is something I don’t  — or shouldn’t — need to explain. But in case I do, just put it in a bowl…. And then put the bowl on a plate. Easy as falling down!

Serve it with some crusty baguette that you will dip into the soup and enjoy the hell out of.

Now go to sleep. You’re full and probably a bit drunk.

Enhanced by Zemanta