so many carrots

Sunday evening I had a pot luck to go to for prospective students in my program. Out of laziness and forgetfulness I made nothing. I pathetically stopped at the grocery store on the way to grab baby carrots and hummus and pita chips. Well, it turns out nobody likes carrots because I came home with the entire 2 lb bag.

Since I'm going on vacay tomorrow (jealous?) I needed to clean out my fridge and these darn carrots were just staring me in the face. So I decided it was a night for carrot soup.

I've never met a bowl of soup (homemade I mean) that I didn't like, and I have tried a bunch of carrot soups over the years. Some broth-y, some creamy, some chunky. Based on the other ingredients I had on hand (shallots, beef stock, and 2% milk) I decided to make a sweet and rich carrot bisque (well, I don't know if it was really a bisque but it was creamy and thick and smooth and whatever).

Here's how I did it:
First, I finely chopped two shallots and caramelized them in a skillet with 1 TBSP butter. Once they were done, I added a big glug of sherry to de-glaze the pan and then I scraped it all into a big soup pot and added around 1.5 pounds of baby carrots. I didn't even bother to chop them. Usually I prefer real carrots, but obviously I had these on hand. After about 5 minutes, I dumped in most of a big container of beef stock (it was in my fridge from last wednesday's dinner) and some spices-- nutmeg, which I add to apparently everything lately, and coriander for kicks.

Once the carrots were soft, I blended it until smooth and poured it back in the pot and turned it on verrrrry low. Then I added some milk (maybe 3/4 cup?) and a teeny bit more beef stock until it was a better consistency. Right before serving, I sprinkled on some parsley. I wish it was fresh, but I didn't have any so it was dried. Still added just a nice bit of bitter to counterbalance the sweetness of the rest. Also, this could totally use vegetable broth/stock instead of beef if you want to make it vegetarian (hence vegetarian label) and I think it would even be better-- especially if it was mushroom broth or something... and, if you're vegan you could do without the milk too. It's creamy enough!

I thought the soup was good. It wasn't the best... and I think that sweet carrots are better left whole. I guess I realized I like my soups to be salty? Anyway, it was decent but I don't think I'd want to make it exactly the same way again. Also, I couldn't bring myself to eat the leftovers today so that wasn't good. Tim didn't really love it either, which is disappointing since he loves carrots. Mostly I think he was weirded out that this pale and fluffy soup tasted like carrots. Silly.