Creamy Roasted Vegetable Soup

One of the easiest ways to live simply and add to your home is to eat in season; if you can eat locally, that’s an added bonus. Getting in sync with nature through the changing seasons, tasting the earth and sun that went into growing your food, can be a simple way to slow down your life, even for just a moment. In the winter months, everything is recharging, dying back so it can grow again in the spring, and that is when we turn to those foods that can last through the frosty months. Root vegetables are a huge staple of this season, both for their hardiness in your pantry and their heartiness in your kitchen.

Cooking with root vegetables can sometimes be a little one-note, though. I developed this recipe for creamy roasted vegetable soup to change things up a little bit. This works with leftover vegetables, too, which is great for cleaning out the fridge. Also, Eric gave me an immersion blender for Christmas and now I want to blend every single thing I can!

Yield

This amount makes enough for about 4 dinner-sized servings. It is easy to batch make by upping the amounts, even changing up the ratio if you like a vegetable more than another. This soup also freezes beautifully.

Time

• Prep: 10 minutes
• Cook: 1.5 hours

Ingredients

• 2 turnips
• 2 carrots
• 2 parsnips
• 2 sweet potatoes
• 2 red bell peppers
• 4 cloves of garlic
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1/2 tsp dried rosemary
• 1 cup of vegetable (or chicken) stock
• Olive oil
• Kosher salt
• Scallions, sour cream, or parmesan for garnish

Tools

• Immersion or regular blender

Process

1. Peel and chop all your vegetables into chunks. Peel your garlic and trim off the ends. Get rid of any seeds or bits you don’t want to eat. Save your scraps for vegetable stock!
2. Preheat your oven to 400 degrees Fahrenheit.
3. Put all your vegetables on a baking sheet, coat with some olive oil, and sprinkle with salt.
4. Roast your vegetables for 45 minutes, stirring occasionally.
5. Remove from the oven and let them cool down just a little bit.
6. Blend your soup.
   • Immersion blender: add your vegetables, stock, thyme, and rosemary to a bowl. Blend everything until creamy.
   • Blender: add everything to your blender pitcher and blend until it’s creamy.
7. Serve warm and garnish with chopped scallions, chives, parmesan, a little sour cream or crème fraîche drizzle, anything your heart desires!

Any root vegetables would be good in this soup. Some other contenders are rutabaga, celeriac or celery root, beets, and potatoes. A splash of heavy cream before blending would also add more richness to what truly is a super healthy soup. I like to serve this with a little sour cream, parmesan, and chopped scallions alongside Irish soda bread and some good butter. I’m having leftovers for lunch as I write this, and I can attest that it’s also pretty good room temp. Hello, summer soup!

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What would you serve with this soup? What are your favorite root vegetables? What else can I blend with this thing? Let me know over on Instagram!