Carrot and ginger soup with orange: sweet, warming, in 45 minutes
One of the cheapest cream soups and one of the prettiest: carrots cooked with onion, a potato for body and fresh ginger, blended with a little cream and orange juice. Ginger brings warmth, orange lifts the carrots' sweetness, lemon at the end balances it. 800 g of carrots, one pot, 45 minutes.
Your own work in that: 20 min.
- Chopping 10 min
- Cooking 25 min
- Blending and serving 10 min
Step by step
0 / 5 doneCut the vegetables
Peel the carrots and cut into thick coins, chop the onion, peel and dice the potato, grate the ginger finely, crush the garlic. The shape doesn't matter, since everything gets blended; what matters is that the pieces are a similar size, so they cook at the same time.
Ingredients: 800 g carrots · 1 pcs onion · 1 pcs potato · 1 tbsp fresh ginger · 2 cloves garlic · 30 g butter · 1000 ml vegetable stock · 100 ml whipping cream (30%) · 1 pcs orange, juice · 1 pinch ground cumin · ½ pcs lemon, juice · 1 tsp salt · ½ tsp black pepper
TipGinger needs no peeler: scrape the skin off with a teaspoon. Grated, it gives up its flavour faster than sliced.
Carrots thick, ginger gratedSoften the onion with the ginger
Melt the butter in a large pot, soften the onion 4 minutes, add the ginger, garlic and cumin and fry a minute until fragrant. Fried ginger is milder and deeper than ginger dropped into water.
Onion, ginger, garlic, cumin in butterCook
Add the carrots and potato, stir through the butter, pour in hot stock to barely cover the vegetables. Simmer covered 20–25 minutes, until the carrots collapse under a fork. Meanwhile toast the pumpkin seeds in a dry pan.
TipLess stock than you think: you can always add the rest when blending. A thick soup is easy to thin; a thin one needs a long reduction.
Barely covered, 25 minutes, until softBlend
Blend with a stick blender into a velvety cream, 2 minutes, longer than seems necessary. Add the cream (keep 2 tablespoons back for serving), orange juice, salt, pepper and lemon juice. Taste: too sweet? More lemon. Too thick? Stock or water. Bring back to the boil.
TipThe lemon at the end is not decoration: carrot with orange is very sweet and without acid the soup tastes like dessert.
Velvet, cream, orange, lemonServe
Into bowls, a swirl of cream, the toasted seeds, chives. With a crouton or a roll. Keeps 3 days in the fridge. To freeze, set a portion aside before the cream goes in and add the cream after reheating.
Ingredients: 3 tbsp pumpkin seeds · ½ bunch chives
Cream, seeds, chives
Before you start
From roasted carrots
Roast the carrots 30 minutes at 200 °C with olive oil and salt before they go in the pot: a sweeter, caramelised, darker soup.
Thai-style
Coconut milk instead of cream, a teaspoon of curry paste with the onion, lime instead of lemon and coriander on top.
For children
No ginger, garlic or pepper, one more tablespoon of butter. A bright orange soup with seeds usually disappears from plates without any coaxing.
