In continuing the trend of cold weather comfort food, specifically warm soups, and the ease of making them……..I move on to the PARSNIP. Parsnip is an underrated vegetable, and most people couldn’t even tell you what they look like. The cashiers at my local grocery stores hate me when I punish them with a bag of parsnips at the register and they look at me and say “carrot, ugh turnip, ugh rutabaga”, and then I just pray they ring it up wrong because for some reason, the parsnip is typically an overpriced root vegetable. I love using parsnip as an imposter to a potato in a good fake-out mashed potato dish. My diabetic dad refuses to acknowledge his love of the parsnip but the dozens of times I’ve made mashed parsnip and he thought he was eating mashed potato is proof that it’s a viable and healthier stand-in.
It’s ironic that I’m making a parsnip focused soup because the first time I ever had parsnip, as a kid, was in a soup, although not a parsnip soup. I just assumed for years that a parsnip was just an albino carrot. We ate parsnip almost every weekend growing up, in my mom’s chicken noodle matzah ball soup. It was one of the few veggies that went into that soup, along with carrot, onion and celery.
This parsnip soup was inspired by one of my favorite cookbooks, A Boat, A Whale & A Walrus written by Chef Renee Erickson, who owns a handful of well-known and locally famous restaurants around Seattle, a place that I called home for nearly 5 years of my life. I miss the gray and I miss the rain, but I miss nothing more than the ingredients and the food found throughout the Pacific northwest. Chef Erickson does such a great job of capturing the feel of Seattle in the food made throughout the book, that it’s no surprise how often I cook recipes from this book, and how much this soup just tastes like home, with a little rain, a little gray, and the memory of albino carrots in my mom’s chicken noodle matzah ball soup.
To finish the soup, at plating, a healthy drizzle of a high-quality balsamic or balsamic reduction is strongly recommended. I was fortunate enough that my wife bought me this incredible Cherry Vanilla Bourbon Cask Balsamic Vinegar from the Queen Creek Olive Mill as a gift. I was waiting to crack it open for the perfect use, and this was absolutely it. Now that it’s open, I’m afraid it’ll go fast as it’s hard to resist the urge to drink it by itself. While not mandatory to finishing off this soup, I strongly recommend a drizzle of a high-quality balsamic such as this.
Parsnip and Apple Soup
Ingredients
- 6 tbsp unsalted butter
- 3 large leeks white and light-green parts only, washed well and chopped.
- 3 medium apples I use Granny Smith because I like the tartness that they add to the soup
- 2 pounds of parsnips peeled and cut into 1 inch chunks
- 2 medium-sized potatoes peeled and chopped into 1 inch pieces
- 8 cups chicken broth you can substitute veggie broth to make this soup completely vegetarian
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 tbsp salt
- good balsamic drizzle about 1 tbsp over each bowl at plating
Instructions
- Heat a large soup pot over medium heat, and add the butter. Once melted, add the leeks to the pot and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally until they're softened.
- To the pot, then add the apples, parsnips, potatoes and broth. Bring to a boil and then reduce to a simmer. Cover and cook for 25 minutes, stirring only a couple of times during the simmer.
- Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until smooth. You can use a traditional blender or food processor but if doing so, let the soup cool slightly before attempting and do so in batches, but again be careful.
- Once pureed and smooth, add the 1 cup of heavy cream and 1 tbsp of salt and stir to incorporate.
- Ladle the soup into bowls and garnish with fresh herbs (dill seen in the picture), and a drizzle of a high quality balsamic reduction.
