The Immersion Blender

I got a new kitchen tool the other week, a Kitchen Aid immersion blender. It is something I’ve been wanting for quite a while and got lucky when I stumbled upon one at Winners for a very decent price. Since I bought it I have used it about three times, that means I have made about three times as many soups in one month then I usually do in six months.

I have been experimenting with different vegetables and flavourings. My first soup was a broccoli cheddar soup from over at www.101cookbooks.com, it was delicious so I decided to follow that up with a spinach zucchini soup, also very good. I kept that one quite thick and added a poached egg on top. It was amazingly filling and kept me full for many many hours.

Next I decided to use up the insane amount of carrots and sliced red and orange bell peppers that ended up in my fridge and make a delicious soup from them. I looked around at some recipes then decided to just wing it. It ended up fantastic. I am glad I have a lot of leftovers and look forward to eating it over the next couple of days.

Here’s what I did:

I didn’t cut up the carrots and bell peppers so I can’t tell you exactly how many I used but if I had to guess I’d say about one or two red peppers, one or two orange peppers and probably about five or six good size carrots. Roughly chop and set aside.

I used two leeks, roughly shopped and two thumb sized pieces of ginger also roughly chopped.

Heat two glugs of olive oil in a big soup pot, add the leeks and ginger and a big spoon full of chopped garlic, if your chopping the garlic yourself then chop up about four cloves and about one teaspoon of turmeric.

Once the leeks have started to go soft and the ginger is really starting to be fragrant go ahead and add all your veggies. Stir it all around in the head for a couple of minutes and then add chicken stock to cover all the veggies. You can add more or less depending on how think or thin you want you soup to be.

Let the soup simmer away until the carrots are tender.

At this point if you do not have an immersion blender then put your soup through a food processor or blender until smooth, put it all back in the pot, add a dollop or either cream or yogurt and your ready to go.

If you have an immersion blender then turn off the heat and blend away until you have reached a nice smooth consistency and add a dollop of either cream or yogurt to give it an extra nice texture.

In the end you will have a big bowl of carrot, pepper, ginger soup. The ginger gives it a warmth that will stay with you for many hours and the carrots and peppers give it a wonderful flavour and a beautiful colour.