Ingredients
2 medium sweet potatoes (1 lb), peeled and cubed (1 ½” pieces)
4 large carrots (1 lb), peeled and cubed (1 ½” pieces)
3 medium parsnips (¾ lb), peeled and cubed (1 ½” pieces)
1 large onion, quartered
3 garlic cloves, peeled
2 T oil
4 1-c chicken (or vegetable) bouillon cubes
6 c water
½ c evaporated milk
½ t salt
½ t pepper
½ t brown sugar (optional)
Directions
1 Preheat oven to 400°. Place sweet potatoes, carrot, parsnips, onions and garlic into a large bowl; drizzle with oil and toss to coat. Place coated vegetables on a 15x10x1” baking pan. Roast 40–50 minutes until tender.
2 Transfer vegetables to a Dutch oven. Add bouillon, water, milk, salt and pepper. Bring to a boil; simmer uncovered 10 minutes; puree; return to pan and heat through. Taste, if there’s too much bitterness, add optional brown sugar.
Sweet potatoes: I’m not a fan; carrots: I love; parsnips: I’ve never had! I can’t believe that I’ve never tasted a parsnip! Before making this soup, I knew what a parsnip was — a root vegetable that looked like a white carrot — but I had never tasted one. So, I tasted one for the first time. Parsnips taste like parsley! They have that taste I can only describe as “fresh bitterness”. And that’s exactly what they bring to this soup. At first, I wasn’t sure if that was good thing because the bitterness was so pronounced, and I thought it should be in the background. I kept tasting the soup, trying to figure out how to “fix” it. So I gave it a night in the fridge to think about what it wanted to be. The next day, I heated up a bowl for lunch, and the flavors of the soup seemed to have melded a little more. The sweetness of the sweet potatoes came through more than before, but that bitterness from the parsnips was still prominent. But it wasn’t an unpleasant bitterness and tamed the sweetness quite well. While making this soup, I kept thinking how unusual this recipe was because it didn’t have any herbs in it. My brain kept telling me, “It’s going to need some herbs! Throw some thyme in there!” And I kept arguing that I’m trying to stay true to the original recipes, and the recipe doesn’t list any herbs. Now having tasted this soup, it makes perfect sense. The soup doesn’t need any herbs, because the parsnips give it that freshness without using fresh herbs. Using the bitter parsnip is a very smart way to balance a soup that could be overly sweet from sweet potatoes and carrots. Bittersweet is not usually the desired outcome for something; but it really works for this soup. Roasted Autumn Vegetable Soup knows exactly what it wants to be, and I like it.
If you’d like to see the original recipes my posts are based on or read Taste of Home’s article that inspired my 50 Soups in 25 Weeks blogging, go to: https://www.tasteofhome.com/collection/soups-to-keep-you-warm-this-fall/.
