Yes! This really is celery soup.
After three long weeks of coughing, fatigue, aches, holidays, hosting the family and taking down Christmas, I looked into the fridge. Tucked into corners and inbetween other food stuff I found a slew of half eaten bags of veges, limp herbs and an amazing amount of celery stalks. A little worse for the wear they were but with a rinse of ice-cold water I knew they’d be revived and ready to use. And it was definately time to use up the bits and pieces of veg and herb.
So here’s what I did. I took that celery and made it a core flavor element of a simple soup. This is everything “but the kitchen sink” a major veg stock rotation; out with the old and in with the new. I’m going to give you the basic recipe but realize you can add, delete or play around with the measures as much as you want. Also, there are few basic techniques that I think add to the lusciousness of the soup. And I’ll share those in Tips & Techniques.
Like my husband whistled out after a hot gulp, “The flavor is so surprising…I can really taste the celery. It’s delicious!” I hope you think so too. Enjoy!
Ingredients
2Tbls of extra virgin olive oil
1 whole bunch of celery stalks & leaves, chopped finely
3 small yellow onions, peeled & sliced thinly
3 small sweet or 1 yellow or red bell pepper, seeded, stemmed & rough chopped
1 small white or yellow potato, cleaned, peeled & cut into 1/2” pieces
4 medium cloves of garlic
5 fresh stems of thyme
4-5C chicken or vegetable stock
1tsp celery salt
1tsp of freshly ground pepper
Kosher salt - to taste
Process
in a large stock pot pour olive oil. Turn heat on to high. Add next 6 ingredients to pot and cook on high for 5 minutes; stirring all ingredients so that they do not stick to the bottom or burn. After 5 minutes turn heat down to medium, saute ingredients for up to 30 minutes stirring consistantly. They should become soft, translucent and a bit caramelized. Once you reach this point add stock, bring heat up to high and bring all ingredients to a boil. Once brought to a boil, turn heat down to simmer and cook for 30 more minutes. Once 30 minutes is up, turn heat off and set aside to cool.
While soup is cooling, place a new stock pot on the stove. Get out your blender and prepare to blend the cool soup. Fill blender 1/2 way up and puree on high untill all ingredients are smooth. Pour smooth soup into waiting stock pot. Repeat this process until done and all pureed soup is in waiting stock pot. Turn heat on high to heat soup. Add celery salt and pepper to soup. Taste. Add additional salt if neccessary. Once warm serve soup and enjoy!
Yields several 1C servings.
Tips & Techiniques
1. A unique technique is to saute your vegetables & herbs. I like to saute for some time. It adds a certain depth flavor to end product.
2. The color of this soup has is due to the color of the peppers I used which were red. I think a hint of color is always nice; not too mention the added flavor of the pepper.
3. The potato used makes this soup smooth and creamy. You’ll not believe that it doesn’t have any cream.
4. Start with 4C of stock. After pureed add the extra 1C if you like a thinner soup.