Carrot Soup: Finding a good home for some slightly wild parsley root
I enjoy the nature behind the practical application of growing vegetables for food. The fact that humans have been on this planet feeding themselves for thousands of years without the internet, is pretty amazing. Well maybe it is not that amazing, but as our society gets farther away from the farm it often seems difficult to understand how our food comes to be. Food is produced with little more that sunlight, soil and water. And the vegetables that we eat, will want to keep reproducing themselves, even after we cut them and take advantage of their ability to create energy. The parsley that went to seed from the year before, was trying to make more parsley and I saw an opening to try a new vegetable.
When I found this volunteer parsley plants in the garden, it had these beautiful roots growing, I was getting excited. It turns out that parsley root has been a cultivated plant in most of northern and central Europe for hundreds of years. The parsley roots that I dug up were knotted and wiry, a cultivated root should look just like a carrot or parsnip, with a pure white color (after a little scrub) and usually have the parsley tops attached, that you can also eat, I used them as a garnish for the soup.
For this recipe, I adapted my tried and true vegetable puree soup method, where I sauté the vegetables for a few minutes in butter, add water to almost cover the vegetables, let it simmer until everything is soft, puree with an immersion blender.
For some reason, I am not a fan of the basic carrot-ginger soup and with sweet vegetables like carrots, I prefer a combination with a little spice. Cumin, makes a good compliment to the carrot and gives it a southwestern feel that goes with the hot sauce and sour cream that I added for garnish.
I often describe my cooking style is “rustic” but today it was a little too rustic.
I have to preface this recipe by saying, at some level, I am now the kid that puts everything in their mouth. Today, I got a little over confident that I could just throw everything in the pot and then blend it up and it would work out. Pulling out my chef resources, I saved the soup by straining it. The easy fix helped separate out the woody bits of my parsley root.
Southwestern Winter Vegetable Soup
- 2 tablespoons butter
- 1 small onion
- 5 carrots, coarsely chopped
- 3 parsnips or 3 parsley roots (no need to peel) or 1 celery root, peeled and coarsely chopped
- ½ teaspoon cumin seeds or ground cumin
- 2 cloves garlic, coarsely chopped
- 2 cups water
- salt and freshly ground black pepper
- Serve with hot sauce, sour cream and chopped parsley herb
Peel the celery root and peel the other vegetables, if desired. Coarsely chop all of the vegetables. Melt the butter in a 5- to 6-quart Dutch oven over medium heat. Stir in the onion, carrot, parsnip, parsley or celery root, garlic and cumin seeds and cook, stirring occasionally, until the vegetables begin to soften, about 4 minutes. Add about ½ teaspoon salt and water to almost cover the vegetables, about 2 cups. Bring the mixture just to a boil, reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook at a bare simmer, stirring occasionally 15-20 minutes. Purée the soup with an immersion blender in the pot or in batches in a regular blender. Strain if needed and adjust consistency with water and season to taste with salt and pepper.
I learned from this experiment that, when using a wild vegetable I should check for overgrowth. Meaning that it was in the ground for longer than it should have been.
Knowing that most of you won’t have parsley root available, you can substitute with celery root, parsnips or even another root vegetable like rutabagas, turnips or radishes. Carrots only would work too. My motto is to work with whatever you have on hand. Don’t forget the salt and it should be fine. Right???