Whole 30 Recipe: Carrot Ginger Soup

Hi!

Last week in my meal plan for whole 30 week 1, I included Carrot Ginger Soup and I want to share the recipe with y’all! It’s a delicious and easy soup that I have adapted to make it fit in the Whole 30 guidelines. I can’t take credit for the recipe. I actually got it on a cruise my husband and I went on with his family! It was the only cruise I have been on and I did not know what to expect. The food (along with the whole experience!) was really great and at the kitchen staff shared some of the recipes. Please comment if you have any questions!

It’s a really great side or starter, but if you want to make it an entree, I would recommend topping it with a little bit of meat or protein of your choosing. 🙂

Carrot Ginger Soup

Ingredients:
2 lbs carrots trimmed, peeled, and sliced into rounds
1 qt (give or take) chicken broth or water
1 onion peeled and sliced
4 tabs unsalted butter (I swap for about 1-2tbs oil to make it whole 30)
1/2 cup heavy cream (optional – I usually exclude)
1″ piece ginger peeled and finely mined
salt and pepper to taste

Directions:
Soak carrots overnight in water. (I have made the soup without doing this, but it cuts down on the cooking time significantly, so it’s a time saver!)

Saute onions in a large, covered stock pot in 1/2 the cooking fat until onions are very soft. Do not allow the onions to brown. Drain the carrots and add them to the pot. Add stock or water to cover vegetables. Add minced ginger. Bring to a boil then reduce to a simmer. Allow it to simmer until carrots are soft. Remove from heat and puree the soup until very smooth. Thin with water or stock if needed. Stir in remaining butter and cream if desired. Salt and pepper to taste. Top with freshly ground pepper.

Notes:
1. If you have an immersion blender, you can just puree the soup in the stock pot. I don’t have an immersion blender, so I just ladle the soup into my regular blender and make sure to include some of the liquid. It purees very easily! You could probably also use a food processor if you prefer.
2. When blending hot liquids, either take off the top or take out the little cap in the middle of your blender’s top and cover with a paper towel or kitchen towel. This lets some of the steam escape.
3. You can also top it with herbs for a yummy twist! I used fennel fronds for the photo above.

Happy cooking!

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Grilled Pizza Deliciousness

Lately, I have been loving trying recipes from Weeknights Fresh & Fast by Kristine Kidd and beautiful photography by Kate Spears. This cookbook breaks up recipes by the season to encourage using the most fresh and seasonal ingredients as well as seasonal cooking styles (no grilling recipes in winter 😉 )

Infused Oil Follow Up

Hey there! I hope your week is going well! We’ve almost made it to the weekend and W and I are excited that ours will include family time and celebrating some dear friends getting married. Lots of fun ahead!

I wanted to give a little follow up to the Infused Olive Oil post and let you know how things turned out. You may remember that I wasn’t so sure about how the rosemary oil would turn out and I was more confident about the crushed red pepper. Well…

The rosemary was DELICIOUS! I let both oils sit for about 36 hours and then I couldn’t wait any longer. I bought a loaf of crusty, grainy bread, sliced it up, popped open the bottle of oil, and dove in. W and I didn’t even move the bread from the cutting board or the plate from our kitchen counter… and I still felt like I was eating at a lovely Italian restaurant! ha!

The crushed red pepper was good, but the rosemary stole the show. I think next time I’ll try using a variety of pepper like this blog suggested. Later that week, I used the red pepper oil in some Curry Lime Hummus (recipe to come) and it was pretty awesome. I felt like I finally figured out how to layer flavor and I was so excited—that will come in handy when I’m on Chopped one day, right?

What else did we do with the oil? We actually found lots of ways to use it! Just about any time I would have normally used plain olive oil, I substituted the infused. The red pepper oil made a great salad dressing with white wine vinegar, and gave sautéed kale and extra punch!

If you’ve tried infusing oil, I hope you had as much fun as I did! I will definitely try it again!

Herb Infused Olive Oil

I had some free time on Saturday and wanted to play in the kitchen, but didn’t know what I wanted to do. Some of you are probably saying, “Bake something, duh!”. I like baking, but my husband isn’t a big sweets-eater …giving you time to process that… okay, is everyone good?… okay… so baking isn’t really my go-to. I love to bake, but I have to have people that I can share the baking with, or else I’ll eat an entire cake by myself over a few days. Not a good idea.

SO, I was trying to decide what to do and thought about making some herb infused olive oil! I had never tried it before and it sounded like one of those projects that would have a very enjoyable end result without too much time or money investment. I found recipes here (has simple, straightforward instructions) and here (has more in depth instructions and lots of information on how to safely infuse oil).

Things you’ll need: about 1/2 cup to 1 cup olive oil (depending on the size of your bottles); your favorite herb, spice, or fruit (there were some yummy-sounding lemon oil recipes on different blogs); glass bottles with a cork or flip top; a small pan; measuring cup or small funnel to safely pour the oil in the bottles.

I decided to make rosemary because it is one of my favorite herbs, I have a rosemary plant, and the sprigs look pretty in the bottle. I also made a crushed red pepper oil because my husband loves red pepper.

The only tricky part was determining how hot the oil was. I heated it in two rounds and the first one started to smoke pretty quickly, so I let it cool before pouring it over the pepper. The second one never smoked, but when I poured it over the rosemary, steam started coming off the sprigs. I’m thinking that may have been because the sprigs were fresh and not dried (although I did wash and dry them well). Fingers crossed that the rosemary won’t turn out to be bitter!

I’m already planning a night this week to sit on our little balcony and eat bread with our oil! I’ll let you know what we think! Have you ever made infused oil? How did it turn out??

Bottles– World Market / Bowls– Williams Sonoma / Measuring Cup– OXO