Curried Carrot Soup

Credit: Flickr / Joyosity

This curried carrot soup is creamy, flavourful and easy to make from scratch

Everybody who has ever eaten this carrot soup has loved it. The creaminess is soothing and the carrots are sweet. The curry adds a slight punch of flavour, but not too much

Curry powder is a generic description used in the West to describe the flavour of South Asian cuisine. It is thought that the word curry comes from the Tamil word meaning sauce. There are many types of curry powders on the shelf, with a wide variety of spice combinations. I used Dan-D-Pak Special Blend Curry Powder.

Although it may seem overwhelming to anyone who has not made soup from scratch, trust me, it is as simple as one, two, three. And it’s an easy way to get more carrots into your diet. Ready?

Ingredients

• One 2 lb bag of carrots (about 5 cups), peeled or scrubbed and cut into 1/4 – 1/2 inch rounds
• One large onion, diced
• One small potato, cubed
• 3 – 4 cloves of garlic, minced
• 1 tsp black pepper

Instructions

1. Saute the above ingredients using 2 tsps butter (you can also use margarine or oil or ghee).
2. Add 3 – 4 tbsps. mixed curry powder and 8 cups water.
3. Make a roux, a basic white sauce used as a base for sauces on vegetables, eggs, poultry, meat, seafood or crepes, with 1/2 cup butter, 1/4 cup flour, 3 cups milk.
4. In a separate saucepan, melt the butter over medium low heat. 
5. Stir in the flour.
6. Using a wire whisk, stir the ingredients so they do not burn to the bottom. The mixture will bubble. Cook for a minute and remove from heat.
7. Pour in the milk, a little at a time, whisking all the while.
8. Return to the saucepan to heat. The roux will thicken and will try to stick to the bottom so be sure to continue stirring constantly using the whisk.
9. When the sauce is thick, it will begin to boil. Remove from heat.
10. Add roux to the carrot mixture and cook for 45 minutes.
11. Before eating, put soup in blender and mix until smooth.

Teresa Goff is a freelance writer and broadcaster. As the mother of one very allergic boy and one very energetic boy, she has learned how to make food out of nothing at all while playing lego and doing two art projects at once.