Here are the beet chips (just wedges tossed in a little olive oil and salt) and half beets plus turnips ready to roast.
Here's the finished soup which really was delicious.
(It was sort of dark so you can't quite see how pretty the beets really are inside or how vibrant and gorgeous the color of the soup was in these photos. Some day maybe I'll get a real camera and figure out how to use it...)
Roasted Beet Soup with Creme Fraiche
4 large beets, washed and cut in half4 medium cloves garlic
1 good-sized sweet yellow onion, minced
1 tsp olive oil
4-5 cups chicken broth (less if you want a really thick soup, more if you want a thinner soup)
1/2 cup whipping cream (optional but it sure makes it good!)
1-2 tsp salt (to taste)
1/2 tsp pepper (to taste)
1-2 bay leaves (optional)
Put take papery outer skins off garlic cloves, place on backing sheet, spray with olive oil spray or canola oil spray. Put beets cut side down on same cooking tray. Cook beets and garlic for about 1 hour at 400 degrees (or until beets are soft and can be cut pretty easily with a fork).
When beets are done, set aside and brown onions in oil in a stock/soup pot.
Cut cooked beets into smaller pieces (to help them blend well) and put them in a blender along with the roasted garlic, cooked onions and 2 cups of chicken broth. Blend until smooth. (If your blender is sort of small, you'll want to blend in batches - I've got a VitaMix and it all fits at once in that container.)
Put blended mixture in stock pot and stir in remaining 2 cups of chicken broth, a little at a time, until smooth. Add bay leaves (optional). Let simmer for about 20 minutes (not necessary but makes it yummier). Just before serving, add the cream and stir it in, setting aside a little cream to drizzle on top when serving. Add salt and pepper to taste.
Serve drizzled with a little cream on top (or a little sour cream is good also). Great with warm crusty bread and butter.
2 comments:
yum i love beets and turnips, will have to try these. turnips are traditionally used in most Chinese soups so we ate those a lot growing up, but in Mandarin, they are called "white carrot" - literally translated to English, so for many years, i had no idea what turnips were but always though of them as white carrots. It took college for me to figure out white carrots don't exist. As for beets, I've never dared buy them raw from the supermarket, I normally wimp out and get the already peeled kinds from Trader Joe's or Costco to be used in my salads. hehe. I heard they bleed a lot and get onto everything, was it easy to deal with?
Looks fabulous! I used to stick my nose up at the beets my mom cooked from the garden. Now that are everywhere and prepared in such delightful ways. I'm going to try this! Dad will love it!
Post a Comment