Soup is an art. In theory, soup is easy. A few ingredients past their prime are thrown in a pot, boiled and then served in a bowl. In practise the right balance of flavours is difficult to achieve so that all the right taste buds are sent tingling as the soup passes over the tongue.
I made soup yesterday and today. Once again, it's not right. I make vegetable soup on a somewhat regular basis. In particular, I make carrot soup. Carrots tend to get to a stage where they are no longer appetizing as carrot sticks but they aren't exactly bad. So they become soup. My soup tends to lack depth.
I have learned that carrots and orange are a pleasant combination. As well as the water, you dump in some orange juice.
I have learned the trick of the potato. A natural thickening agent, if you boil the carrots up with a potato or two, when everything is blended and added back to the pot, you will get a thick creamy soup.
I have learned that you can't leave out the stock. You can try but the soup will definitely lack the necessary depth of flavour.
However, I think the real secret is the bacon. I didn't use bacon this time and it shows. You throw in your butter, onions and a strip of bacon and fry it all up in your soup pot. Then you throw in your other ingredients and the water, boil it and simmer it. Don't forget your stock cube! At this point, I normally get bored so I stop.
The next day I throw it all in the blender, put it back on the stove and try it again. Once again, disappointment. Not quite there. I have the consistency down. My soup is a wonderful consistency, it coats the back of the spoon and feels like proper homemade soup. This is good. The colour is fantastic. Bright orange with pepper bits.
Now the taste . . . today's soup was brought to you by the flavour curry. In principle, I still think this is a good idea. I think with bacon it would be better, it might get the undertone that is lacking. My gut feeling is that carrots might just not have a lot of natural flavour and there is a spice out there that would do the trick.
Soup is an art. One day I will be the master of carrot soup. It's a good job it's healthy. Unlike, the candy recipe, I'm trying next.
4 comments:
Try roasting the vegetables (if they are a roasting-kind-of-veg) first and then putting them in the soup. It's like caramelizing onions first -- they get sweeter and have better flavour. I never put raw onions in anything these days, unless it is a chili in the slow cooker and even then, I usually fry them up first. You can also cook them in the frying pan first, as it takes less time and you don't have to turn the oven on. Good luck!
Carrot soup needs leeks or onion. Throw in some different veggies and blend the heck out of it
I did put onion in it but maybe I need to put more in.
The roasting is a good idea. You could do that to both the onion and the carrots.
Have you tried using coriander? Maybe a bit of garlic... roasted might go nicely. Maybe dill.
I have seen a few recipes make use of a bay leaf, not sure having never used one myself. Thyme and celery also seem to be popular choices.
What you might want to consider doing is to make up a big batch of your current recipe. While it is cooling down break it up into smaller portions and add different herb combinations to each portion.
Then the next day (or over the course of a few days) you can blend up and reheat each one and compare them. Might save a bit of time compared to doing each batch from scratch, and you waste less is you are unhappy with a flavour.
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