Healthy Nibbles & Bits

A nourishing carrot and sweet potato soup made with just 8 ingredients. The sweet potatoes give the soup a creamy texture so you don’t need to add any cream or milk!

Welcome to a brand new year—a fresh opportunity for us to set intentions that guide us for the next 365 days (I suppose it’s 364 days now). Like most people, my new year’s intention is to live healthier: to eat better, move around more and declutter my life. One of the first steps to healthy living is to feed my body with nourishing food, and this carrot and sweet potato soup is exactly what I need to kick off the new year.

The soup gets its nice creamy texture from the sweet potatoes, so you don’t need to add cream or milk. The beauty of this recipe is that the list of ingredients is short and sweet. There’s nothing in there that you can’t find at a regular supermarket. I wanted this soup to be quite zingy, so I added a 1 1/2-inch piece of ginger. Feel free to reduce it to a 1-inch piece if you prefer less ginger flavor. To sneak in more vegetables, I also added 1 cup of diced cauliflower florets to the soup. If you don’t happen to have the cauliflower around, leave it out. It won’t affect the flavor at all.

MASTERING MY MISTAKES / COOKING NOTES

• Dicing the sweet potatoes: To speed up the cooking time, I chopped the sweet potatoes into small chunks, at about a 1/2-inch dice.
• To thin the soup: This recipe yields a thick and creamy soup. If you want the soup to be thinner, add 1 cup of water. Note that you may need to adjust the seasonings.
• Variations: This soup works wonderfully with butternut squash. Substitute the sweet potatoes for 1 pound of cubed butternut squash.
• More soup ideas: Looking for more soups? Try these: Thai-spiced butternut squash soup, vegan tomato soup, and slow cooker corn and potato soup.

Creamy, Gingery Carrot and Sweet Potato Soup

★★★★★

5 from 1 reviews

• Author: Lisa Lin
• Prep Time: 10 minutes
• Cook Time: 25 minutes
• Total Time: 35 minutes
• Yield: serves 4 to 6 as a side

Ingredients

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1/2 large yellow onion, diced
• 2 cloves garlic, sliced
• 1 to 1 1/2-inch piece of ginger, minced
• 1 pound sweet potatoes, peeled and chopped into 1/2-inch cubes
• 3/4 pound carrots, sliced
• 3 cups vegetable broth
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander (optional)
• 1 cup chopped cauliflower florets*
• salt, to taste
• 1/8 teaspoon cayenne pepper (optional)

Instructions

1. Heat a large heavy-bottomed pot with the olive oil over medium heat. Add the onions and let them cook for about 5 minutes, stirring frequently. Next, add the garlic and ginger and sauté for another minute.
2. Add the sweet potatoes, carrots, broth, and coriander (if using), cover the pot and bring everything to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium-low and simmer the soup for another 5 to 7 minutes, until the sweet potatoes are fork tender.
3. Turn off the heat, remove the lid and add the chopped cauliflower florets to the pot. Let the soup sit for about 10 minutes.
4. Transfer everything to a high-speed blender and blend until smooth. You may need to do this in batches.
5. Return the soup to the pot. Season with salt to taste (I added about 1 teaspoon of kosher salt). Add 1/8 teaspoon of cayenne pepper if you want a hint of spice. I like eating the soup at about this temperature. If you want it hotter, warm the soup at medium heat for a few minutes.
6. Serve the soup in bowls and top with coconut milk, sliced scallions, and red pepper flakes, if you desire.

Notes

NUTRITION INFORMATION: Amount for 1/4 of recipe: Calories: 213, Total Fat 7.3g, Saturated Fat: 1g, Sodium: 635mg, Cholesterol: 0mg, Total Carbohydrate: 35.6g, Dietary Fiber: 7g, Sugar: 10.2g, Protein 3.6g

• *You want the cauliflower to be chopped finely (roughly 1/4-inch chunks).
• I added cauliflower to the soup because I wanted more vegetables in it. You can leave it out and it won’t affect the flavor of the soup.