Leave the pumpkin spice out of this! Some of our favorite savory autumn spices come together with the best in veggie comfort food to make a delicious, spicy, warming soup, perfect for rainy and cold days or for putting in a thermos and taking with you while leaf-peeping!
I absolutely love creamy carrot soup this time of year, especially since right now it the perfect time to be pulling up our nice fresh carrots out of the ground {we got a couple dozen out of our garden!}. But I’ve been looking for an alternative recipe to my very decadent Creamy Carrot Soup.
Which I need to update. The post. The recipe. The pictures. All of it. So eh, don’t look at it, just trust me in saying that it’s delicious but also full of butter, cream, chicken stock, and not a lot of seasoning and spice, which carrot soup should absolutely be full of. I mean, it has it’s place, but that recipe could honestly use some TLC – which is probably why I was looking for an alternative.
This recipe is a variation on a dozen different Moroccan spice carrot soup recipes that I’ve been researching. Because when you say Moroccan spice, I say which one? Moroccan food is so rich and flavorful and full of such a huge variety of delicious spices, that you can’t possibly hope to sum up their cooking style with one spice or one mix. Can you? Ras el hanout maybe? Where are my experts?
But where ras el hanout is a mixture of at least a dozen different ground spices, this soup uses six – garlic, ginger, paprika, cumin, and cinnamon. And more if you consider the salt and pepper added. All of these are included frequently in Moroccan cooking, but there is nothing about this particular recipe that speaks to any of those techniques. Instead, this is just a flavorful mixture that adds a lot of zip to a surprisingly creamy cream-free soup that makes your whole house smell like fall.
For two or three days after I cooked up this recipe, our kitchen area just smelled great! I’m thinking of figuring out a way to get some whole spices from this mixture to simmer on the stove in a sachet so that we can keep the house smelling this good!
Or I’ll just have to keep making more of this!
I don’t think anyone in my family would mind if I just kept a pot of this bubbling always!
We’ve made a few batches of this soup and killed it pretty quickly, although it does keep pretty well if you seal it in mason jars – make sure you’ve got the right jars that are meant for heating and freezing, meaning that they are made of tempered glass. Leave about an inch of space for expansion, close the lids tightly, and pop the jars into the freezer. When you’re ready to thaw, thaw overnight in the fridge, and then heat up in a double-boiler.
That technique works for just about any kind of soup – minus the ones with potatoes. I haven’t figured out a good way to freeze soup with potatoes. They always come out a bit gluey. If anyone has any tips or tricks, please let me know!
In the meantime, let’s enjoy this spicy warm autumn comfort food!
[lt_recipe name=”Autumn Spice Carrot Soup” summary=”Leave the pumpkin spice out of this! Some of our favorite savory autumn spices come together with the best in veggie comfort food to make a delicious, spicy, warming soup, perfect for rainy and cold days or for putting in a thermos and taking with you while leaf-peeping!” servings=”6″ total_time=”35M” print=”yes” image=”https://homefrontcooking.com/wp-content/uploads/2020/09/Autumn-Spice-Carrot-Soup-1513-1024×683.jpg” ingredients=”3 tbsp butter;1 medium onion, chopped;2 cloves garlic, chopped;1 red bell pepper, chopped;1 1/2 lbs carrot, peeled and sliced;3 cups vegetable stock;1 tbsp honey;1/2 tsp ginger;1/2 tsp paprika;1/2 tsp cumin;1/4 tsp cinnamon;2-3 tbsp sour cream;salt and pepper to taste;sour cream and chopped parsley for garnish” ]Heat your oven to 375F.;Place the butter in a stockpot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat and stir until the butter melts. Add the onion, bell pepper, and garlic and stir until the onion is softened and translucent, about 5 minutes.;Stir in the carrots and sauté with the other veggies for 2 minutes.;Add the vegetable stock and bring to a boil. Reduce and let simmer until the carrots are very tender, about 20 minutes.;Using a blender or immersion blender, puree the soup until smooth.;Return the soup to the stockpot and add the honey, ginger, cumin, cinnamon, and salt and pepper to taste. Stir in the sour cream. Warm over low heat, 1-2 more minutes.;Serve warm, garnished with sour cream and chopped parsley.[/lt_recipe]
This is rapidly becoming one of our favorite cold weather soups! And it’s one that’s hearty but thin enough to put in a small thermos and take with you on a leaf-peeping adventure! We’re planning one of those when my in-laws visit – just a nice long drive and picnic – because this weekend is supposed to be peak leaf for Virginia and we don’t want to miss it!
How about you guys? What kind of tasty comforting spices would you add?
