healthy soups Archives - Good Food St. Louis

The simple soup is made of tasty root vegetables.

These colorful vegetables are on their way to becoming a tasty winter soup.

‘Tis Soup Time

I’m always looking for ways to make soup healthier and still maintain its flavor. I found this recipe for Roasted Carrot, Parsnip and Potato Soup in the New York Times a while back. From the comments made by readers, it was a winner.

I plundered the frig and found that I had all the vegetables, with the exception of the parsnip. Drats! It was unlikely any of my condo neighbors had a spare parsnip I could borrow, so I put off making the soup. I really wanted the parsnip flavor.

Then one day while grocery shopping, I came upon some fine looking ‘snips in the produce section. I got the urge to pull out the soup pot again. When I finally assembled all the ingredients, I re-read the directions and found that it was not a stovetop, pot-type recipe. The vegetable soup started in the oven!

The seasoned vegetables are tossed in olive oil and placed on a rimmed, parchment-covered baking pan.

Chop, Roast, Blend

Chopping was minimal, but it took nearly an hour of roasting to caramelize the veggies. (I spent the time scanning the catalogs, that had accumulated on my kitchen table.) After the veggies had a good roasting, it was just a matter of blending them with the stock. (I used packaged broth, having left all my turkey broth in the freezer at the farm.)

I finished by pureeing the cooked vegetables and broth in the food processor. The recipe says to use a blender, but mine is at the farm. Hmm. . . are you sensing a pattern here for someone who cooks in two locations?

Into the oven until the edges of the vegetable chunks get slightly brown.

Veggies chunks go into the oven until their edges get slightly brown.

The caramelized veggie go into the food processor.

The caramelized veggie can be pureed in a food processor or blender.

A Bowl of Comfort

The food processor left the mixture looking a little gritty, so I gave it a few spins with the immersion blender. Within seconds, the texture was velvety smooth.

By the time I finished photographing my kitchen escapade, my soup was cold. But it rewarmed nicely. It was heavenly. . . creamy, but without the cream!

NOTE: Commenters on line suggested including some fresh red pepper, apple, and/or extra garlic. I’ve not tried that yet, but it seems reasonable.

An immersion blender is perfect for blending soup.

An immersion blender is perfect for getting a creamy soup.

A piping hot bowl of lentil soup. Like chocolate and hamburger, lentils are not photogenic. It’s a trait that doesn’t, in the least, effect the taste of the nutrition-packed legume.

I made a big pot of lentil soup this week. Eating lentils always seems like such a healthy thing to do, especially this time of year when we’re gorging ourselves on cookies and cakes and sugar plums. Because lentils are full of fiber, protein, iron, and vitamin B, they can easily be a meal in themselves.

The recipe included carrots, onions, spinach, celery and a splash of wine. Oh, yes, and a bit of sausage to enhance the flavor, if not the health benefits. You can find the recipe at Food52 (one of my favorite food blogs). Or here. This dish is not as complicated as the long directions would lead you to believe. The writer, Antonia James, is just chatty and smothers you with an abundance of detail.

I dished up a bowl for dinner and froze the rest in small Zip-lock bags for those times when I need a quick and hearty one-dish meal.