Carrot

According to my mother, I was a very picky eater as a kid. But really, what kid wasn’t? I do remember the days when I wouldn’t eat pepperoni pizza or drink root beer. And now here I am making red curry carrot soup! My how things have changed!

I think the word curry scares off a lot of people. Heck, it scared me off for a long time. I assumed curry was a specific spice or spice mixture. But really curry is a dish that can be made of any number of various spices, meats, vegetables, etc. They can be spicy or mild. Really they can be made just about any way you like. The more curries I have tried, they more I realized I actually really like them!

Red curry is popular in Thailand and the sauce is made from a mixture of ginger, tomato paste, cumin, coriander, tumeric, chili powder and a number of other spices. It’s super savory and flavorful, which pairs perfectly with the sweet carrots in this soup.

I first sauteed the carrots, onion, and garlic until the carrots were slightly tender. Then I added in the curry paste and stirred the carrots around so that they were coated. To that, I poured in some vegetable broth and coconut milk, which is another key ingredient in red curry.

Once the carrots were nice and tender after simmering in the broth for a while, I blended everything together with an immersion blender until it was nice and smooth. If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can blend in a regular blender, just make sure to vent the lid to let the steam out.

While I love all the flavors in this soup, I also really love that its pretty healthy! The coconut milk has some healthy fat, but the rest of the soup is pretty much just vegetables and some delicious spices. Not to mention those spices have their own health benefits, like turmeric, garlic, and ginger.

If you are a little apprehensive about trying curry, I highly recommend giving this soup a shot! It’s definitely a good entry point to the world of curries, and since it’s homemade, you can control the spices a little more to suit your own tastes.

If you make this recipe, I would love to know what you think! Especially if you are new to curry. I hope you enjoy!

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Here we go, another soup recipe. I am on a roll, guys. This time it’s a carrot soup. Now, there is nothing sexy about carrot soup. Plain old carrot soup might as well be baby food. They are essentially the same thing – pureed carrots. But this soup…This is no plain ol’ carrot soup, its Thai carrot soup. It’s sweet, spicy, nutty, creamy, flavorful, and rich. Sexy, right?

In addition to the soup, I tossed in a few turkey meatballs spiced with lots of Thai-inspired spices like ginger, cilantro, garlic, fish sauce, and chilies. Together is a complete meal that is surprisingly healthy!

The star of the show are these lovely carrots. I roasted them in the oven first before roughly chopping them and tossing them in a big pot with diced onions and chicken stock. If you wanted to make this soup vegetarian, substitute vegetable stock instead.

Once the soup stock came to a boil, I added a healthy scoop of peanut butter, a spoon full of coconut cream, and red chili paste. I then got out my hand dandy immersion blender [Side note: I have used this thing more in the last month than I have since we got it as a wedding gift 2 years ago] and blended everything together until almost smooth.

At this point I did a little taste test and added a bit of salt, pepper, and Sriracha. Normally I am not a spicy-food eater, but this soup definitely needs some spice to balance out the sweetness of the carrots.

The meatballs were very simple to make, and they came together so quickly I didn’t have time to take any pictures of them. Plus they get my hands so dirty, if I wanted to take pictures I would have gotten raw turkey meat all over my camera.

For the meatballs, I just mixed together the ground turkey, spices, and breadcrumbs, and formed them into ping-pong sized balls then baked them in the oven for about 20 minutes.

Once everything was ready, I ladled the soup into a couple bowls then plopped a few meatballs right on top. I sprinkled a bit more Sriracha sauce on there for good measure along with some cilantro and green onions.

It is such a change for us since we don’t do that much Thai cooking and we really don’t do that many spicy meals. But I could not get enough of this soup. Even the Sriracha sauce wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be. I can see why people love the stuff so much.

I hope you give this soup a try even if Thai food isn’t your thing. The spice profile can be adjusted to suit your tastes, whether spicier or not so spicy. So you really have no excuse NOT to make it!

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Red Curry Carrot Soup

Thai Carrot Soup with Meatballs