This creamy curry leek carrot soup is easy to make and works perfectly as a healthy dinner soup all by itself or it can be used as a base for a curry vegetable dish. Its warm, rich and buttery flavor will have you licking the bowl!
Bad Carrot Leek Soup Gone Good
So I have to admit that this creamy curry leek carrot soup recipe started out really yucky and sad. By that I mean it was a little too healthy for my taste buds. It was extremely vegetable-y (yes, that’s a made up word, but for a Southern girl, a very real word). So thank God I have an amazing husband who has an amazing palate and a knack for making things taste A-MAZING!!!!
And truth be told, isn’t this how the whole recipe making thing works? I mean, you just start throwing things together and then you fall back on your knowledge of the basic making-food-taste-good techniques and then some how, some way, you end up with an amazing dish out of nowhere!
Carrots!
This creamy curry leek carrot soup started with carrots… a lot of carrots.
So yes, this is just the first crop of carrots from our garden and by the looks of it, we may have about three to four more harvests of the same size or better. So, ummm, yeah, we have carrots. And these aren’t normal carrots, they are ginormous, organic carrots that just look like they are from some other planet!
And cleaned up, they still look strange… but who cares! They are delicious and fresh and chemical and pesticide free!
Making Carrot Leek Soup
So what do you do when you have a bunch of carrots? You make carrot soup! We happened to have leeks in the fridge as well because we had just received our box of veggies from Farm Fresh To You. It’s a local organization that delivers fresh, organic vegetables to your doorstep. They get the vegetables from area farmers who are organic certified.
We decided to try out a vegetable soup with the carrots, leeks, some lentils and vegetable stock. And this was all it was going to be… in the beginning…
How to Make Creamy Curry Leek Carrot Soup in the Vitamix:
So basically making soup in the Vitamix is really simple. Because we wanted to soften the vegetables first, we boiled the carrots, leeks and lentils in some vegetable stock (you can also use chicken stock). Once they were tender, we allowed the soup mixture to cool a bit and then poured batches into the Vitamix and blended it until it was smooth and creamy. You can add more stock if needed. The Vitamix can also handle grinding down the vegetables raw and some people even make their soup just from blending the vegetables down into a puree. I just happen to love boiling down the vegetables into the broth and how all the flavors combine. To each their own…
Making “Healthy” Soup Taste Good
So once the carrots, leeks and lentils were grinded down in the Vitamix, I took a taste and immediately thought, “Oh dear… and there is soooo much of this soup!” It was very vegetable-y for my liking. Don’t get me wrong. My husband has done an excellent job of converting me from a meatatarian to a lover of all foods including fruits and vegetables. But this… this was rough.
And so, we started with this as a base. I almost poured it down the drain but my husband convinced me he could turn it into something incredible. Because I have seen him do this before many times, I went ahead and saved it in 3 cup portions in freezer safe bags. I left a 3 cup portion out for him to “experiment” with and watched as he started his food magic!
And that’s when he reminded me of the essentials… a fat, an acid, and some kind of spice or flavor. And away he went. He added curry powder and chili hot sauce (why didn’t I think of that). Then he squeezed in some lemon (dangit, he’s always telling me to add lemon). And of course, butter and olive oil turned this just o-kay soup into a most wonderful, creamy buttery soup that I would eat any day of the week. And that’s how the creamy curry leek carrot soup was born!
Tips for making the Creamy Curry Leek and Carrot Soup:
- Start with fresh, organic ingredients. I keep saying it, but really, organic vegetables taste so much different. The flavors are incredible AND they are chemical free. Why would you eat vegetables slathered in chemicals… ewww.
- In a stock pot, cook the carrots down with just a little butter and oil first since they are a tougher vegetable. Then make sure to slice up and thoroughly rinse the leeks. They tend to be dirty and sandy inside the stalk. Add them in to the pot with the carrots to soften them next.
- Boil all the vegetables including the lentils in a large stock pot with either organic low sodium vegetable stock or chicken stock. You can add more salt if needed, but I’m finding that the low sodium stocks are sufficient for our flavor needs. Plus, once you add a few spices (which are more healthy for you than salt), you’ll be set.
- Allow the vegetables to cool a bit before adding to the Vitamix to break them down into a puree.
- Taste the mixture and then add flavors as desired. Don’t forget to add an acid of some sort (lemon works great), a fat (butter or olive oil) and a spice or flavor (curry and hot sauce).
- Garnish the soup with cilantro or parsley and have sliced lemon and hot sauce on hand to add as needed.
Here’s the recipe for the Creamy Curry Leek and Carrot Soup:
Curry Leak and Carrot Soup
Ingredients
Method
- In a large pot, heat butter and a tablespoon of olive oil. Add the carrots and cook until tender, about 7-10 minutes. In the meantime, slice and clean the leeks. Add them in and allow to soften.
- Add the lentils. with 1 1/2 cartons of stock and bring to a boil. Reduce to a simmer and allow to cook about 25-30 minutes. Make sure everything is tender.
- When the soup is done, allow to cool for 5-10 minutes. Then puree in batches in a food processor or blender. If the soup is too thick, then add more vegetable or chicken stock.
- Once the soup is completely pureed and combined, then separate this base soup into 3 cup portions and save in quart sized freezer bags. If you are making the final soup for dinner, then add in the remaining spices and ingredients. You may need to double or triple the spices if you are serving the entire pot. With just a 3 cup portion of the soup, add 1/2 tsp curry powder, 1/4 tsp chili hot sauce, 1 tbsp olive oil, 2 tbsp butter, 1/2 lemon squeezed, 1/2 cup water added to desired thickness/thinness. Garnish with cilantro or parsley. Add more flavor to taste. Enjoy!
Notes
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