Whole Carrot Soup

We've gotten a few big bunches of colourful carrots in our CSA recently - orange, white and red - with their bright greens attached.

Did you know you can eat carrot greens? I didn't.

I decided I wanted to find a dish where I could use both the root and greens in one dish, and opted for a made-on-a-whim soup...

Whole-Carrot Soup

I used three bunches of carrots in total, and approximately two bunches worth of greens.

For the soup base I used an organic vegetable broth and added all of the orange carrots (diced) along with some caramelized onions and sautéed garlic. I made an herb bundle out of thyme and rosemary from my garden (tied with a carrot green stalk!) and seasoned with salt and pepper. When it had cooked well, I took out the herb bundle and used a hand blender to puree the soup. I would have liked a bit more carrots in the base to thicken it, but I needed the liquid content to cover all the food I was about to add!

After this I added some freshly chopped garlic, along with chopped red and white carrots (the red ones are anything from a red to a purple, and have an orange center). I removed the thicker stalks from the carrot greens, chopped it up and threw it in. Seasoned to taste, cooked it until it looked done. Serve and eat.

What I would change next time - I would probably roast both the carrots and the garlic to add an extra richness and deeper taste to it, but it was a fabulous soup!