[Modernist Cuisine] Caramelized Carrot Soup (3•301 and 6•150)

[Anonymous Modernist 11077]

My wife and I made the soup this afternoon: Heaven! Outdid our expectations. (This is after my wife opined that carrot soup would be "boring".) We followed the recipe exactly, as we always do with a new recipe. Including making the carotene butter, coring the carrots (even though my wife whined), and melting the butter in the pressure cooker (before making the soup I read every post here about it). Used Whole Foods carrot juice and regular store-bought carrots. Couldn't be happier: deep, rich, sweet carrot flavor. Going to serve it to friends on NY Eve. And later next year I will use fresh carrots from the Raleigh, NC, farmer's market. One thing. The recipe yielded only 3 cups and not the 6 that MCAH indicated. Any ideas why? We are experienced cooks and I believe we followed the recipe exactly as written. Any tips would be appreciated.

[Anonymous Modernist 197]

Any recommendations for making this dairy-free? I'm not sure what fat best replaces the butter and would hold up under pressure. Would I need to add additional water to replace that phase of the butter?

[Anonymous Modernist 14333]

I'm really excited to make the soup. However, I am having a problem making the beta-carotene butter. It seems as though the emulsified carrot juice and butter is not separating in my refrigerator. Therefore, I am not having any congealed butterfat to scoop out. The mixture remains in emulsion. Does anyone have any suggestions? I am following the recipe precisely as described in MCAH (carrot juice and butter).

[Anonymous Modernist 14719]

Hi there,

new to this site, and to MC in general. I found the videos on Chow.com, bought a pressure cooker and got to playing in the kitchen to see what happened. As many people appear to have done, I started with the caramelized carrot soup recipe, it worked first time, and was truly delicious. However, I got to thinking, has anyone tried blending the carrot juice with a more savoury flavour (veg/beef stock) to act as a foil to the intense sweetness of the caramelized carrot? I can see that in a way it would defeat the object of concentrating carrot flavour, but before I get to experimenting, I was curious to know of others' experiences.

Many thanks,

Richard

[Judy Wilson]

Hi richp,

Welcome to the forum, and to Modernist cooking! You are just in time, because we're helping people ease into Modernist cooking on our blog over the next few months!

To answer your question, I'm not sure if we ever tested the carrot soup with stock, but we have several variations on this recipe in Modernist Cuisine at Home. Several of them include stock, rather than juice. In fact, one of my favorites, the apple/parsnip variation, includes chicken stock. Others include corn stock or fish stock (we have recipes for them elsewhere in MCAH), or even coconut milk.

Judy

[Anonymous Modernist 3281]

I made a lentil soup the other day that used the carrot soup recipe as the base. so besides the carrot soup components (pressure cooked/pureed simmered) it also had some sous vide turkey stock concentrate as well as a few other ingredients one would find with lentil soup. It came out excellent.

[Anonymous Modernist 11889]

I have made this soup a few times and almost prefer it when I do not core the carrots. When cored, the soup becomes almost too sweet for my taste.

[Sam Fahey-Burke]

Hi charles_brooker,

The carotene butter is probably still emulsified. I would recommend gently heating it until it breaks and then chilling it again.

Sam

[Anonymous Modernist 5214]

Hi all,

so this is my first MC recipe I followed. Everything went well, I even created the carotene butter. The result is most likely the thing the result should have been. The only thing is ... is it really supposed to be so dense and heavy with butter? The thing I created is just so much butter, after all, there is about 150g of butter in it. Can someone confirm it? Considering the recipe is easy (butter, carrots), there is no way I could have missed the order of weight of the ingredients...

o.

[Anonymous Modernist 310]

It's a rich soup, you won't be eating a large bowl as an appetizer! But it shouldn't be that heavy there is ove a litter of soup to put that butter... On my side it's always been a success with everybody.

[Anonymous Modernist 15234]

Great recipe!

I have a comment though. When I opened the pressure cooker I found a caramelized mixture but was way too thick for the blender to get some sort of smooth consistency that could be blended so I added the boiled carrot juice slowly as it blended. I think that helped the result is good (a bit too strong carrot taste, but what is to expect from a soup made only out of carrots).

Any comments as to why am i getting such a thick result from the pressure cooker?

Thanks

macutan

PS: I have not scaled up or down the original recipe and I have measured the amounts of ingredients using an accurate scale. (The 500gm of carrots were after being peeled and cored).

[Judy Wilson]

Hi macutan,

What sort of blender were you using? We recommend using an immersion (stick) blender.

[Anonymous Modernist 310]

In my case after cooking the carrots I had liquid in the PC and I could blend the result to a smooth texture in a regular blender. (even with the initial 50 minutes cook time.) Do you still have liquid at the bottom of your PC when you open it? If not it may be caused by excessive venting.

[Anonymous Modernist 15234]

Hi Judy,

Thanks for getting back to me. I used a stand-up blender type (like the one I thought you used on the video for this recipe (and on the photos in the book)), (Breville Die-Cast Hemisphere), I guess next time I can try with the immersion blender.

LFMichaud, I had very little liquid (if any) left on the pressure cooker, 50gms of water and the melted butter pretty much were all used up and mixed with the carrots. Lucky i shook a little the PC (a few times) during the 20mins of cooking otherwise I guess the carrots would have gotten stuck to the bottom.

I wonder if I double the size for next time I would get a bit less of a thick mix out of the PC.

Otherwise the mix (when adding the separated carrot juice) was smooth and perfect after blending and putting it through a shift.

What other recommendations do you have to serve this carrot puree (instead of the coconut cream and tarragon). The taste is great but a bit strong for more than 10-15 full tablespoons.

Thx

macutan

[Anonymous Modernist 3421]

Is there a way of making this recipe with less butter or using olive oil instead, I really love this recipe but eating that much butter every week it is just too much 

[Anonymous Modernist 15936]

MCAH mentions the addition of baking soda as being the secret to Heinz tomato soup but then after the tease, doesn't give us a recipe for tomato soup   I'm going to have a go but I am wondering if I need to amp up the baking soda, compared with carrots, say, due to the fact that the tomatoes are much more acidic and it's the alkaline effect that helps the caramelisation. Has anyone tried and if so, how much did they use and what happened? Thanks!

[Ozcook]

Tonight I made the butternut squash version of this recipe as found in MC@H. I cooked it in a Fissler 8qt. I was concerned that the recipe only called for 30ml of water when the manual states that 300ml of liquid is the absolute minimum to avoid damage to the PC and/or the stove. Even allowing for the butternut to have a high water content and the butter to contain water, it seemed to me that it was unlikely to meet the liquid minimum.

 

Anyway, I went ahead and started bringing the mixture to pressure. With other recipes when the pressure builds up steam briefly escapes from the outlet near the handle and then the indicator button begins to rise. Not this time. Steam continued to escape and water dripped from the handle for about 10 minutes, after which I chickened out and opened the lid (there was no pressure). The butternut was beginning to caramelize. I added 300ml of water and returned to PC to heat. It quickly came to pressure.

 

The result was delicious. However the question remains, is the recipe really safe for a pressure cooker when the suggested amount of liquid is so far below the manufacturer's minimum? Also, have others found it takes a long time to come to pressure with so little liquid?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

As admittedly a home cook I butchered my thumb last fall trying to core nice organic carrots for this dish.  The soup was OK, perhaps more than OK, maybe very good -- but I think the recipe is dangerous as demonstrated in the photographs.  I now use cut resistant gloves.

 

If I were to make this soup again I would not core the carrots.  Or perhaps I would try to develop a safer method.

 

The pressure cooking step worked fine, I have no problem with that.  (Also using Fissler 8 quart.)

[Ozcook]

The pressure cooking step worked fine, I have no problem with that.  (Also using Fissler 8 quart.)

 

JNW, did it take much longer to come to pressure because of the small amount of liquid?

[JoNorvelleWalker]

I am sorry I do not remember.  But my results are probably in some eGullet thread or other.

[Chris Hubbard]

I've made this recipe a number of times (both MC and MCaH) and a few of the variants.  Over the weekend I made the butternut squash variant, and as I needed a lot of it (30 servings) I used 2000g of butternut squash.  

 

I *think* I scaled the recipe correctly, which is to say I used: 

2000g butternut squash, peeled, seeded, diced

320g butter

30g salt

10g baking soda

I do mix the salt and soda with some water to make a slurry before adding it to the melted butter.

 

I cooked it under pressure for 20 min, did the quick release and then tasted the butternut squash, nicely caramelized (as expected) but so salty that it was inedible.  

 

I'm using Diamond Kosher salt.  

 

Did I do something wrong?  If so please advise.

Thanks in advance,

Chris

[btbyrd]

The MC@H recipe calls for salt at 1% the weight of the vegetable during the pressure cooking step, but you went over by half a percent. But they also call for seasoning it again at the end, so that might not have been the issue. Were you using salted butter? Did you puree the squash before you tasted it? It could be that the outside of the squash was too salty but the inside wasn't.

Edited January 22, 2015 by btbyrd (log)

[Chris Hubbard]

Yes, MC@H calls for 1% and MC calls for 1.5%.  I did puree the butternut squash before tasting it.  It wasn't (just) over-seasoned, it was too salty, even people who like salty food would not eat more than a small taste.  

I assume that if I measured correctly my salinity would have been around 15 g/kg, for reference sea water is 35 g/kg.  That does seem too high to me.  

Looking at the recipe that's about the same level of salinity.

 

I ended up making the whole recipe a second time, but omitting the salt.  When it was done I added about 470g of the really salty first batch to the unsalted second batch and it came out perfectly seasoned, and everyone ate it.