As winter drudges on I find myself spending my lunch hour curled up by a space heater at my desk oggling photo after photo of soup on pinterest. One recipe in particular kept stopping me in my tracks, a cluster of vegetable based soups in bright technicolor that promised to detoxify my liver. Since I have been forced to adhere to high carb diet, our pantry was stocked with sweet potatoes so I thought I’d try my luck with this alluring orange number.
I’ll cut straight the chase on this one before we dive into the particulars. When you see a bowl of food this beautiful that also promises to rid your body of any number of toxins, the author probably hasn’t actually eaten it. If they have, I’m not really sure what their definition of “soup” is. I will categorize this more as “healthy” mashed potatoes, a little too sweet for my tastes with a one note flavor that had me fantasizing about Hearty Cheeseburger Soup by the time I’d made it through a quarter of the bowl. Yeah, thats right, Hearty Cheeseburger Soup.
We made a few alterations to the original recipe as we went along, the most important of which was the cook time and temperature of the vegetables. The original recipe called to cook for 20 minutes at 329*, which after the timer went off I realized was completely insane. We upped the temperature and roasted for an additional 40 minutes. I’d recommend starting off at 400* and roasting for an hour at a minimum.
In the end I wish we had introduced more liquid and more heat to the soup. A little cayenne went a long way on making it more palatable, and I wish I had had the foresight to blend in more stock or coconut milk to improve the consistency. Overall I think it is a promising base that, while easy on the eyes, could use a bit of massaging before I’d recommend it as a memorable soup.
- ½ cup cooked red lentils
- 1 sweet potato, peeled and cut in cubes
- 3 carrots, peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 parsnip, peeled and roughly chopped
- 1 onion, peeled and cut in quarters
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 tsp turmeric powder
- 1 tsp cumin powder
- Pinch of chili powder
- ¼ tsp sea salt
- 2 cups vegetable broth
- ½ inch piece of ginger, peeled and grated
- 1 tsp coconut oil
- Fresh parsley, 1 teaspoon coconut milk, to garnish
- Heat the oven to 400*
- Line a baking sheet with baking paper, add the sweet potato, carrots, parsnip, onion, and garlic, season with salt, chili, turmeric, and cumin, add the coconut oil and toss to combine.
- Roast for 1 hour then transfer into the blender.
- Add the warm vegetable broth, grated ginger, and cooked red lentils into the blender and process to obtain a smooth cream.
- Serve warm, garnished with fresh parsley.