Carrot and Parsnip Soup – A Very Vegan Christmas

Serves: 8

Time: 1 hour 10 mins (1 hour cook, 10 min prep)

Price: €3.26 total, €0.41 per portion

Welcome to week 2 of A Very Vegan Christmas!  This weeks starter is a festive Carrot and Parsnip soup, because soup is always a safe bet as a starter!  Soup is also a great make-ahead starter so doesn’t need to be made on Christmas day – it would be best made on the 23rd-ish.  Soup is also fab to have on hand because I don’t know about you, but I often focus so much about Christmas dinner that I forget to plan food for the surrounding days – this would make a great boxing day lunch with leftover sandwiches!  I’ve never been the biggest fan of parsnip on its own, but in a mash or soup it adds the sweetest depth of flavour to the dish!  It also, to me, gives such a warming, wintry taste too!

You will need:

• 1kg carrots, cleaned and roughly chopped
• 2 medium parsnips, cleaned and roughly chopped
• 4 sticks of celery, cleaned and chopped
• 2 knorr stock pots dissolved in 2lt boiling water (or 2lt of stock of your choice)
• 3 medium brown onions
• 3 tbsp tomato puree
• 3 tsp ground cumin
• salt and pepper to taste

How to make it:

Begin by sweating the onions in about 100ml of stock over a medium-high heat.  Once the liquid is evaporated, add the celery and another 100ml of stock and return to the heat.

When the onion and celery are soft and translucent, and all the stock is evaporated, add in the tomato puree, cumin and about 200ml of stock.  Return to the heat, mixing well to form a glossy paste.

Once you have reached this consistency, add the carrot and parsnip to the pan, along with the remaining stock.

Return to pot to the heat, cover and bring to the boil – then reduce the heat until the soup is cooking at a rolling simmer.  Leave to cook (responsibly – do some dishes or something, don’t leave the house!) for 40-60 mins.  Once the carrot and parnsip is super soft, season with salt and pepper to taste and remove from the heat and allow to cool. 

When the soup is cooled, blend using an immersion blender until smooth.  When the big day comes, just reheat until piping hot and serve with some parsley and some crusty bread.  Don’t serve too much, got to save some room for the main event!  This soup is great made ahead of time and refridgerate or frozen so you can prep well in advance.  As always (because I’m not rich) it’s also extremely budget friendly!

I hope you give this recipe a go, let me know if you do!  Let me know in the comments what your favourite soup is at this time of year?!  See you on Wednesday for main number 2!  Make sure to follow my blog so you don’t miss it – it’s a good one!

Let me know if you try this recipe by commenting down below and tagging me on Instagram! If you have any suggestions on ways you improved this recipe or your own little additions, please share!  Also feel free to share/pin this recipe on Pinterest!