Carrot Ginger Orange Soup is a creamy, mellow soup that is a wonderful start to a great meal. This recipe is so easy to make and simmers for less than an hour, creating a rich and flavorful soup. Once puréed, add a little cream, brighten with some orange zest and you have a special soup to serve your guests.
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I always tell my students that making a delicious carrot soup is a great way to practice your knife skills. Since the soup will get puréed at the end, it doesn’t really matter how you cut the carrots up, so you can make many different types of cuts with the carrots and get all your practice in. If you’re not into practicing your knife skills, of course, you can use a food processor or chopper to cut up the carrots for this carrot ginger orange soup, but you’ll be missing out. 😉
The first cooking step, once you have all your carrots cut up, is to sweat the onions and carrots together.Sweating is a culinary term that isn’t used very often in home cooking settings, but it’s used all the time in professional cooking and is actually very descriptive. It means to cook the vegetables over a low to medium heat so that they sort of cook in their own juices. You’re not looking for color on the vegetables when you sweat them – you just want them to soften slightly and start to release their flavor. Adding salt to your vegetables helps bring out the moisture in the vegetables, letting them sweat faster.
When it comes time to add liquid to the soup, you have a choice. You can either add chicken stock, or if you prefer, you can add just water. I often use water when making vegetable soups because I like the flavor of the main vegetable to be the prominent flavor in the soup and not muddied with the flavor of chicken stock. Having said that, using a good quality chicken stock is never a bad idea (unless you’re vegetarian!). A quick simmer – 30 to 40 minutes – is plenty of time to make sure the carrots are completely soft and have had time to blend their flavor with the orange juice and ginger. You can use an immersion blender to purée the ingredients, or you can work in batches and purée the soup in a blender or food processor. I prefer to use a blender because that way I know that no carrot can escape being puréed, but an immersion blender is admittedly much faster.
This soup is a great way to start a dinner party because it can be made ahead of time and just reheated when you’re ready to serve, without worrying about any change in color as is the case with many green vegetable soups. Garnishing with a touch of whipped cream, a sprinkle of nutmeg and some curly orange zest can take this simple carrot ginger orange soup to the next level in a very elegant manner. Et voilà!
Carrot Ginger Orange Soup
Nutrition InfoPrint Recipe
- Prep Time: 15 m
- Cook Time: 45 m
- Total Time: 1 h
- Servings:
8
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons butter
- 3 pounds carrots peeled and sliced thin
- 1 onion chopped
- 1 teaspoon salt
- 1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger
- 6 cups chicken stock (or water)
- juice of 3 oranges about ½ cup
- pinch of freshly grated nutmeg
- ¾ cup heavy cream divided
- freshly ground white pepper
- zest of 1 orange
- chopped fresh herbs
Instructions
Heat the butter in a 5-quart stock pot or Dutch oven. Add the carrots and onion and cook the vegetables together for 5 minutes. Add the salt, fresh ginger, chicken stock and orange juice and bring the mixture to a simmer. Continue to simmer over low heat for 40 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Using an immersion blender, purée the soup until smooth. Alternately, purée the soup in batches using a food processor or blender and return the puréed soup to the pot.
Add a pinch of nutmeg, ¼ cup of the heavy cream and orange zest. Season to taste with white pepper.
- Whip the remaining heavy cream until it thickens slightly. Ladle the soup into serving bowls and dollop the thickened cream on top. Garnish with a sprinkle of nutmeg and some fresh herbs.
Enjoy,
If you made this recipe, please add your comments and ratings below.
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Nutrition Facts
Carrot Ginger Orange Soup
Amount Per Serving
Calories 218Calories from Fat 99
% Daily Value*
Fat 11g17%
Saturated Fat 6g30%
Cholesterol 31mg10%
Sodium 719mg30%
Potassium 766mg22%
Carbohydrates 25g8%
Fiber 5g20%
Sugar 12g13%
Protein 7g14%
Vitamin A 28710IU574%
Vitamin C 13.3mg16%
Calcium 71mg7%
Iron 0.9mg5%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.
Products Featured In This Recipe
AppliancesProfessional Grade High-Speed Blender
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CookwareCast Iron 5.5 Quart Dutch Oven
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Comments (6)Post a Reply
Love this. Have made a similar one (while dieting) which includes potatoes, curry powder, cinnamon, nutmeg and ground cloves.
Reply
Sounds and looks delicious. Can you use vegetable stock?
Reply
Absolutely! If you have a vegetable stock that you like, go for it! Vegetable stocks have varying tastes because there are so many different vegetables that can be used. If your vegetable stock is prominent in one specific flavor, it will add that flavor to the soup. With vegetarian vegetable soups, I often use water so that the flavor of the vegetable in the soup really shines.
Reply
Carrot soup sounds really good. How many minutes would you pressure it in a pressure cooker and NR or QR?
Reply
Hi Bobbye. I would try 5 minutes of pressure cooking with a natural release. You might also only use 5 cups of liquid and then add more if it needs thinning afterwards. The pressure cooker doesn’t allow for any evaporation, which would happen on the stovetop.
Reply
for me i knew it would need a kick. i sweat a small serano chili in it. make sure if you use big fat carrots you cut them small. they would take forever to cook otherwise. thanks Meredith!Reply
