Chipotle Carrot Soup with Torn Brown Butter Croutons
It’s officially soup season and I’m fully embracing it with this smokey chipotle carrot number!
The recipe sort of came about on accident and I’m not mad about it! The other day, I was in full soup mode but didn’t really have much of anything in my fridge. Two things I did have were a huge container of some sad looking carrot sticks and a few tablespoons of chili compound butter that I took home from Octavia (left over from a pasta dish they recently removed from the menu).
I’m not usually a fan of carrot soup with just carrots – I’d typically add something starchier like sweet potato to get a creamier end product. But, I was desperate for a big bowl of soup so I decided to try it out!
The result was delicious – the soup was unexpectedly creamy + smooth and the chili butter made the soup savory and slightly spicy! I topped the whole thing with crispy brown butter croutons and a little bit of chive. It was just what I was craving and now, I’m officially a carrot-only soup convert!
I know that not everyone has a compound chili butter handy (let’s face it – I never really do either lol), so I developed the below recipe. It combines all of the amazing flavor components of that original soup but without the fancy butter. It’s creamy, smokey, and has a nice spicy kick to it. The perfect thing to warm you up on a cold day!
Serves 6
INGREDIENTS
8 Tbsp unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, sliced
Kosher salt
2 chipotle peppers in adobo
2 lbs carrots, washed and cut into 2-inch pieces (no need to peel!)
2 qts chicken or vegetable stock
1/4 cup heavy cream or coconut cream (optional)
1 loaf bread, crust removed and torn into crouton size pieces
Chopped chives (for garnish)
METHOD
In a dutch oven or large pot, melt 4 Tbsp of the butter over medium heat. Add the sliced onion and a big pinch of salt and turn down the heat to low. Allow the onions to cook, stirring occasionally, until they are soft and translucent (but not brown).
Add the chipotle peppers, breaking them up with the back of your spoon. Cook the until the chipotle is fragrant, 2 minutes.
Add the carrots and stock and turn up the heat to medium-high. Once the stock has reached a simmer, turn down the heat to low and cover the pot with a lid.
Allow the mixture to simmer over low heat for about 20-30 minutes, or until the carrots fall apart easily when you crush them with your spoon.
While the soup is simmering, make the brown butter croutons. Arrange the torn bread on a sheet pan and pre-heat the oven to 375 degrees. In a medium skillet over medium-high heat, melt the remaining 4 Tbsp butter. Allow the butter to bubble, stirring constantly with a spatula, until the milk solids turn a medium amber color and the butter begins to smells nutty. Pour the brown butter over the torn bread and add a big pinch of salt. Toss to coat and bake in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until the croutons turn golden brown.
Transfer the cooked carrot + chipotle mixture to a blender and puree in batches until very smooth (more notes on blending hot things in the notes section below!).
Transfer the smooth, pureed soup back to the dutch oven or pot in which you cooked it. If you’re adding cream, pour it in at this point.
Serve warm, topped with the warm croutons.
NOTES
Carrot Size: The cook time of the carrots in step 4 will depend on how big your pieces of carrots are – it may take a few minutes longer if they are on the big side and a few minutes shorter if they’re a bit smaller. This is also why it’s important for your carrot pieces to be relatively similar in size – you ideally want them to cook at the same rate.
Soup Texture: Soup texture can be a personal thing – some people like it super thick and others like it on the thin side. I personally like my soup to be somewhere in the middle, so that’s how I wrote this recipe. That said, if you like a super thick soup, hold back on some of the stock from the get-go. If you like a thinner soup, wait until the soup is blended and back in the pot and stir in more stock until it reaches your desired consistency!
Blending Hot Things: You want to be really careful when pureeing something hot, like a soup, in a blender. First, you want to make sure to blend the soup in multiple small batches. If you have too much hot liquid blending, the build-up of pressure from the steam can cause the lid to fly off the blender and soup to fly all over your kitchen…not ideal! The other thing you want to do is remove the little plastic cover over the hole on the blender lid (most blenders have this). While you’re blending, hold a kitchen towel over the lid and press down, allowing some steam to escape from the uncovered hole in the lid. This will also help prevent the lid from flying off while you blend!