Wizzley

Creamy Carrot Soup with Celery Root

by Mira

This creamy soup can be made in no time, and with frozen ingredients at that. Still, I recommend using fresh carrots, celery root, and dill. You’ll get a tasty and healthy soup.

This cream of carrots soup is a great way to include carrots in your diet. A cup of boiled carrots contains over 30% of your recommended daily intake of vitamin A, which keeps your immune system, your eyes, and bones happy. Vitamin A also increases women's fertility and plays an important role in embryonic development.

Here in Romania carrots are considered by some the number one vegetable to use as a base in soups. Then come celery root (celeriac) and parsnip or parsley root. Onion is also used all the time, but you'll notice if you boil an onion separately in one liter of water that its taste is not too strong (and it's of course even weaker if you use one onion to a large pot of soup).

There’s not much to this recipe – it’s extremely easy to make.

Ingredients and Instructions

Ingredients and Instructions

Prep time 30 min  -  Total time 55 min
Ingredients for 4 servings
5 medium carrots  • 2 medium onions  • ½ celery root (celeriac)  • 8 medium cloves of garlic (or not)  • 50 grams / 1.75 oz butter  • 2 flat teaspoons low-sodium salt  • 150 g / 5.5 oz sour cream 15%  • 4 sprigs of dill

Instructions

1. Bring water to a boil in a large soup pot.
2. Peel the carrots with a smart peeler; peel the onions and celery root. (Peel and dice all of one celeriac, and store half of it in the freezer for later.). Wash and dice the carrots and celeriac. When the water comes to a boil, add the vegetables to the pot (add the onions whole). Boil for 15 minutes.
3. Peel and dice the garlic and let it sit for the allicin to form.
4. Remove the carrots and celeriac (and throw away the onions, or keep to eat later separately) with a draining spoon and add them to the blender together with the garlic and some broth. Purée the mix.
5. Salt the purée. I suggest you add half a teaspoon of low-sodium salt and go up from there. Add thin slices of butter to the puréed vegetables and mix with a spoon so it can melt and blend with the vegetables. Add some of the broth, little by little, till you get the consistency you want. Taste and add some more salt if it’s needed.
6. Serve the cream of carrot soup with 1 heaping tablespoon of sour cream and a sprig of dill, and make some croutons as well to go with it.
Recipe:   5.0/5 Stars (13 Votes)

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A note on the ingredients and preparation

1. I added celery root to the most pared-down version to the recipe. Celery root (or celeriac) and leaves are rather popular here in Romania for certain soups.

2. I used butter rather than the olive or vegetable oil other versions of this recipe call for. Also, I didn't sauté the onion and the garlic. I think that for this particular creamy soup butter added to the warm puréed carrots is best.

3. I didn’t use milk, because I felt the carrots were sweet enough.

4. I chose to add garlic, but it tastes great without garlic as well.

5. I didn’t need to use chicken broth. It tasted good enough as it was.

6. I got rid of the onions. You can keep them.

7. I suggest you salt the soup gradually, and in two stages: first the puréed vegetables after you run them through the blender, and then again when you add the broth. It's important to have enough salt, or else the carrots will be way too sweet. On the other hand, you don't want to add too much salt.

8. Add the broth gradually, till you get the consistency you want. Do note that you will end up with more broth than you will need for a creamy soup. I usually chill the leftover broth, and drink it later as is.

A few words about the health benefits of celery root. It contains vitamin B6 (which, according to a 2005 study of Brigham and Women’s Hospital, affiliated with Harvard Medical School, reduces the risk of colorectal cancer in women) as well as other vitamins of the B complex, and vitamin C. It’s also a good source of minerals: phosphorus, potassium, magnesium, manganese, and several others, in smaller amounts. One cup of boiled celeriac also gives you 7% of your recommended daily intake of fiber.

I use celeriac in all my soups and in plenty of other types of dishes. If you want a primer on soups, then see the book on the right, which has over 900 recipes! Now that's value for the money. And value it is, because all the books I've read from Reader's Digest on health and nutrition, as well as their cookbooks are wonderful.

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And some comments about the boiled onions I threw away. As much as I would have liked to keep them, they would have changed the taste significantly. Without them in the purée, the taste of carrot in the soup was still prominent, which is what you want, if you’re making a carrot dill soup, and not something else. But I have to admit I don’t like to throw onions away, since, even boiled, they’re packed with vitamins and minerals. A cup of boiled onions has, for instance, 14% DV vitamin B and 18% DV vitamin C. It also contains considerable amounts of manganese (16%), potassium (10%), phosphorus (7%), copper (7%), magnesium (6%), calcium (5%), iron (3%), zinc (3%), and selenium (2%). (Of course, the amounts will vary based on location.) Onions are great to include in your diet.

A note on preparing the dill for storing in the freezer

First wash the various stalks. Then pick the leaves off the stems and place in a plastic bag. Squeeze the bag around the contents until you draw all the air out. Then tie the bag around with a rubber band, label, and store in the freezer for later use. You'll end up with a small frozen brick of dill, which you can then chop up easily on the spot every time you serve this soup.

Enjoy the cream of carrots soup!

Some of My Other Easy, Healthy Recipes

It’s late afternoon, and you’re expecting a couple of friends over for a few minutes before you all head out to have dinner together. What can you serve them?
This is a super easy and fail-proof way to bake fish, and the result, paired with the garlic sauce I give in this recipe, is absolutely incredible. A sure-fire way to relish fish.
Say you think you can’t cook, but you want to make something special. Here’s a very tasty recipe for cooking newbies. Easy to make mistake-free. Pictures included.

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Updated: 10/29/2020, Mira
 
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Mira on 07/31/2019

We don't throw away much food (leftovers). Food scraps, yes. The municipal waste management company is Rebu. Note that we don't have dumpsters at apartment buildings: we throw the garbage down a chute. It collects in a dumpster, yes, but we don't throw it there ourselves (as I hear it happens in cities in the US).

DerdriuMarriner on 07/30/2019

Mira, What do people in the city do with food scraps and kitchen leftovers? Is there a Romanian equivalent of Waste Management, which collects garbage set out in dumpsters and trash cans in the United States?

Mira on 07/30/2019

People in the countryside give their food scraps to the poultry. Chickens eat cucumber peels, eggshells and so on. I haven't seen much composting around though. In fact I just asked an aunt right now (almost not believing that they didn't / don't compost) and she said it was a very good idea and she'll read about it and get on it :) So thanks :):)

DerdriuMarriner on 07/29/2019

Mira, Thank you again for the lovely annotated recipe.
So if you all don't compost, do food scraps and kitchen leftovers go into the trash for the Romanian equivalent of Waste Management (highest-paid CEO in the United States)? What do you all tend to use for garden, houseplant and lawn fertilizer?

Mira on 10/04/2015

It depends. I find that broccoli soup, for instance, needs milk, whereas this one doesn't. Unless you prepare it Thai-style, in which case you add coconut milk (and other ingredients).

frankbeswick on 10/04/2015

I find that vegetable soup can take any kind of vegetable, so pumpkin will easily go into it.

Mira on 10/04/2015

You could, but you'd have to use something spicy hot/piquant. I'm also thinking coriander. Here's a recipe that sounds excellent to me: http://www.jamieoliver.com/news-and-f...

blackspanielgallery on 10/03/2015

I am wondering if pumpkin could replace the carrots. we just bought a rather large pumpkin, and my wife plans to make soup from it.

Mira on 10/01/2015

Yes, I agree I should have used the onion to make a veggie spread in the blender, for instance. I'm also all for composting.

frankbeswick on 10/01/2015

My personal policy is to use up waste food. Only today I combined a large portion of marrow with some scrap vegetables in the soup maker. But peelings and other scraps are composted.So re-use is the first choice, composting the second.

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