Spiced Carrot & Chickpea Soup

5-6 Qt stock

10 -12 Carrots

1 Whole onion

4 Clove garlic

2 White potato/sweet potato

3 Cups chickpeas (canned or fresh)*

2 Tsp ground coriander

4 Tsp ground cumin

½ Tsp ground chili

Olive oil

Salt & Pepper

Hey everyone, so over the weekend me and my girlfriend went shopping and saw ten pounds of carrots for $1.87, you know we got them right? We weren’t going to let this deal get away from us. Naturally the first things that came to mind was to make a massive batch of orange goodness soup. I decided to make a spiced chick pea and carrot soup, I did look up a recipe online so I could get a spice ratio for the soup just because I wanted the ratio to be good and it’s not something that I have totally perfected. Once I had an idea I fixed the measurements to my liking.

So get all your stuff, your containers, your stock heating up, your spoons, measuring spoons and cutting boards. Have everything ready and organized.

Get your stock heating up on the stove while we start getting ready to make our soup.

First we are going to knock off the tedious stuff, the peeling of more than a pound of carrots and two potatoes. Once you’ve got them all peeled just dice them. They don’t need to be equal sizes because it’s a soup and you’re going to puree it in the end. Normally I would tell you to keep the potatoes in water but they shouldn’t be out long enough to change in color or make a difference at the end.

Next we can peel the onions and garlic. We are going to give them a rough chop and save them in a container. Please don’t cry, the onions are sorry for what they have done to you. I’ll give you a moment to stop tearing up. Right! Back to it then. We have out carrots, we have our onions & garlic. Next is our spice, please don’t measure this with your tea spoon that you use for stirring your coffee and tea in the morning. Go grab a real measuring spoon and measure those spices.

Grab your stock pot, I own an 8 Qt pot. Pour your olive, just enough to line the bottom of it.  Once your pot is warm (You can tell by the waves in the pot or u can just drop a pieces of salt in to see a reaction or one of the pieces of onion) add the rest of your onions and garlic to the pan. Season them with salt and pepper. We want to cook the aromatics slowly, so keep your pot on a fairly medium heat until you can’t smell those onions anymore. You can then drop the spices and crank the heat up a little higher. We are trying to toast the spices with the aromatics and release those oils and scents from the spices. You’ll be surprised the different flavors that come out once you toast spices. 

The spices are toasted, the aromatics are all cooked out, now it’s time to drop in the carrots and potatoes. Season them again with some more salt and just leave them there to cook a bit. It shouldn’t burn, if it’s catching on the bottom it because your flame is too high. The chickpeas can go in after the carrots ,then get the stock in there. 

Once you’ve got it all in just taste the liquid, is it super bland? Can you taste a little bit of salt? Does it want more? These are questions for you to ask yourself. Add more salt if you think it needs it but don’t forget that the soup will reduce so don’t put too much salt. It’s better to have too little than too much. Now just watch that pot of wonderfulness just bubble away. You will have to take that foamy gunk off the top of the soup. We call those impurities.

Once your soup is done you can take all the solids out and put them in a blender and just add some of the liquid from the soup in and blend it until smooth. I left my own with some texture. Adjust the seasoning and there you have it. Yummy soup. Enjoy!

*If you have fresh chickpeas, please be sure to soak them over night or else they will be extremely hard and grainy in your soup.