French Cream of Carrot Soup

This cream of carrot soup has been the savior of my coronavirus lockdown diet. Prior to the coronavirus, I would always grocery shop once a week to get fresh veggies. When the lockdown first started, I thought hard about how I can grocery shop for several weeks in one go. This invariably ended up that the third week after shopping heavily featured carrots and sweet potatoes since they last the longest. This carrot soup has been a monthly staple now as a way to make something that tastes very fresh towards the last of the meals before shopping again. 

Cream of carrot soup is a french soup recipe. I was inspired to make this by watching the French cooking academy video. I recommend watching the video to learn some background on how to make any cream of X soup, called veloute soups. The French cooking academy videos are great for learning the technique behind traditional french dishes and also for Stephane’s delectable French accent 😉

French Cream of Carrot Soup

• 2 pounds of carrots
• 1 large onion
• 1 clove garlic
• 32 oz of chicken bone broth (ideally homemade)
• 1 tsp dried thyme
• 1 bay leaf
• 1/3 cup white rice (this is to make it creamier, but can be left out if avoiding grains on levels 2 & 3)

1. Chop the onion and slice the carrots. I cut much thicker than the video because I’m lazy… 
2. Heat the soup pot with a small amount of your preferred cooking oil like olive oil or avocado oil.
3. Saute the onions for 5 minutes until translucent. 
4. Add in the carrots and garlic to saute another 4 minutes.
5. Add in the chicken broth so that the carrots are fully submerged. Add in the thyme, bay leaf and rice.
6. Simmer soup until carrots are fully cooked. 
7. Remove the bay leaf.
8. Add the soup into a blender and purify until no more lumps. It’s best to let the soup cool down a bit before doing this step.
9. Pour the soup back into your soup pot and reheat. Add any additional water to get the soup to your preferred consistency. Salt and pepper to taste.

To count the cups, I cut my soup amount in half – so 1 cup soup = .5 cup color.