Roasted winter vegetable soup
I was in one of my rare improvisational moods, so I made up this soup. In a nutshell, I chopped a bunch of winter vegetables, threw them in the oven with some olive oil, and then pureed the whole thing with stock. And much to my surprise, it came out great. Don’t forego the garnishes suggested here. The addition of pine nuts, parsley and balsamic vinegar took it to another level. If you have fig balsamic, all the better. This soup calls out for experimentation – scroll down for suggested variations.
Roasted winter vegetable soup
- 3 cloves garlic, peeled and left whole
- 1 medium onion, roughly chopped
- 2 carrots, thickly sliced
- 1 parsnip, thickly sliced
- 1 large stalk celery, thickly sliced
- ½ small butternut squash, peeled and cubed (about 2 cups)
- 1 medium sweet potato, peeled and cubed
- ½ small fennel bulb, trimmed and cubed
- 10 whole fresh sage leaves
- 2 T. extra virgin olive oil
- Salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
- 5-7 cups vegetable broth (use gluten-free broth if you are gluten-sensitive)
- Chopped flat leaf parsley, for garnish
- Toasted pine nuts, for garnish
- Aged balsamic vinegar, for garnish
Place the garlic, vegetables, sage and olive oil in a large roasting pan and stir to mix. Sprinkle with salt and pepper. Roast at 400 degrees for 35 minutes, turning once. Puree with stock in a food processor or blender. (The amount of stock you need depends on the amount of vegetables you end up with, so start with 5 cups and add more until you get the thickness you want.) Season with salt and pepper to taste. Reheat and serve, garnishing with pine nuts, parsley and a drizzle of balsamic vinegar.
Note: Feel free to vary the vegetables here – for instance, you could use celery root, turnips and cauliflower in place of the celery, fennel and sweet potato. If you want to spice things up, sauté 2 tsp. minced fresh ginger in 2 tsp. olive oil over low heat for two minutes, adding 1 tsp. each of ground cumin and coriander, plus a pinch of cayenne during the last minute. Add this mixture to the food processor when you are pureeing the soup.
Pumpkinseed oil might be good in this soup, too.
Cathyyyy!!
Such a pleasant surprise to stumble upon your blog. This is of such great help to me as my wife is a hippie vegetarian. And I was looking for some butternut squash recipes. BTW, I write an Indian food blog too. Visit it if you get a chance.
Déjà vu. The roasted winter squash amuse we were served at Bouley on Monday night had very similar components. They also garnished with (tiny) toasted pine nuts, (super finely minced) greens, and included what I presume was a dash of vinegar, which provide nice textural and flavor contrasts with a rich and smooth soup.
The big difference is that they added what seemed at the time like a ridiculous amount of butter to the veggies, turning it into the soup equivalent of fancy restaurant mashed potatoes.
P.S. I don’t know how we roasted veggies before we had silpats in half hotel trays.
P.P.S. Usually we use meat or poultry stocks, but for vegetarians and for some soups, we make the labor-intensive Greens Cookbook veggie stock, which itself involves lots of root veggies. I wonder if roasting them first would improve the flavor, sort of like roasting bones for a brown meat stock.
This looks really delicious Cathy! I would love a bowl of this right now!
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This soup looks amazing. Do you know how much it makes?
Sorry, I guess I forgot to note that. I think I served it to a dinner party of six people as a first course. And there may have been a bit leftover!
love all your vegan recipes! I’m just starting out (due to a new dairy and egg allergy) so this is very helpful!
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