Our Favorite Soup Thanks to the Root!

You may recall our earlier posts about one of the root vegetables we absolutely adore growing and making into all sorts of delicious dishes thanks to our dear foodie friend Basia: celeriac, also known as the celery root. (Celeriac - like a pug, so ugly, it’s cute …I mean delicious; Celery Root and Potato Mash; Celery Root with Thyme; Creamy Celery Root Salad - Can you tell that we really hope you do something with celery root in your kitchen one day? )

This versatile bulb can be used in so many ways - from baking or roasting it for a simple side dish to mashing it to eating it raw. Celeriac has a subtle flavor; it’s a bit like a celery-flavored potato.

One big reason we love this veggie is it makes our favorite winter soup. As we are in the deepest of colds with piles of snow all around us right now in Chicago, this is the perfect time to feature our favorite soup: Cream of Celeriac Soup. However, with the hearty, creamy, earthy flavor of this soup, it’s sure to be a crowd pleaser whether warm or cold weather happens to be surrounding you. It’s easily a meal on its own. When I make a big batch, I freeze some and enjoy it a month or so later for lunch. That’s one of the first things I enjoyed for lunch when we moved back home in earlier January - no muss no fuss. Just set out my tupperware container to defrost and zapped a bowl of it in our new speed oven/microwave, sprinkled some celery salt on it. Voila - I had a steaming and filling bowl of soup for lunch in the midst of unpacking box after box after box!

In my ingredients picture below, you probably see a big dish of parsley. that’s the other aspect I love about this soup; it features fresh herbs which you can vary up. I’ve use parsley regularly; I’ve also used tarragon as well as cilantro, and I’ve used a mix of fresh herbs at times depending on what I have on hand. It’s also a flexible recipe in that you can use more or less celery and more or less celery root. I tend to use 1 small and 1 larger celery root or 2 medium sized roots. In the original recipe I found years ago, it simply calls for 1 small celery root. If you just use with one, then you have a lighter-weight soup. But if you like it like we do, as a hearty meal-in-one soup perfect for a cold winter’s day, I recommend you use 1.5 to 2 celery roots of small to medium size. If you find suddenly that the soup is too thick, you can easily add more broth and/or more water, and you simply have more delicious soup for more meals.

I have my neighbor Julie to thank for giving me an excuse to make this soup a bit earlier than normal - in late October. She had dropped off an extra bunch of celery she had, so that prompted me to make my first batch of Creamy Celeriac Soup. Since this soup-making episode, I’ve made this two more times - can’t get enough of this soup.

As we’ve established in other posts, Mike can be a particular eater — always making sure there is no glockija factor in any dish — but this soup consistently gets eaten up quickly by both of us, and we have served it to company as well. It is a wonderful soup to eat with slices of warm bread; Mike and I are total happy boolos when we mop up our last bits of soup with a baguette slice. So if any of you are looking to have a safe gathering of folks in your bubble or just make a new soup for your family, I encourage you to try this. It’s fairly simple with a number of ingredients you probably have on-hand.

Thanks to the Food Network website for the foundational recipe. (If you are curious about the glockija factor that Mike Baker is always keeping an eye out for and has prompted many cooking debates in our household, you can check out the first part of an earlier post at this link.)

Cream of Celeriac Soup

Ingredients

4 tablespoons unsalted butter
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, sliced
Kosher salt
1 bunch celery, chopped
1 to 2 celery roots of small to medium size peeled and chopped (There are 3 in my picture simply because I thought it made for a pretty picture. I typically use 2 celery roots.)
1-2 bay leaves. (This time I used 2 to dial up the flavor even more, but usually just use one.)
4 cups low-sodium chicken or vegetable broth
2-3 cups water depending on how thick you want your soup
1 cup heavy cream or cream substitute
1-2 cups mixed fresh herbs (such as parsley, tarragon, dill or cilantro) - I consistently use closer to 2 cups as I love the taste of fresh herbs in everything. My most typical herb for this soup is parsley.
Toppings: celery salt, toasted almonds, celery leaves

A Note About Prep

I enjoy prepping vegetables. I find prep activities such as chopping, dicing, peeling, slicing to be meditative and relaxing. It can also be time consuming. As the recipe requires you to chop or slice an onion, chop up a head of celery as well as peel the celery root — often requiring a knife versus vegetable peeler — and then chop the celery root, I often will prep the veggies at an earlier time, store them for an afternoon or overnight and then make the soup. This way I find I can fully focus on and enjoy both the chopping and the actual making of the soup. Similar to storing cut potatoes, I recommend you store the celery root in water with lemon. Then the pieces will stay as creamy/white as they were when you cut them versus oxidizing into a brown color. The rest of the soup-making is super-easy - throw the ingredients together, bring to boil, let simmer until celery root is soft, and then food process with herbs of your choice.

Directions: (approx 60-75 minutes)

Melt the butter with the olive oil in a large pot or Dutch oven over medium-high heat. Add the onion, season with 1/2 teaspoon salt and cook, stirring occasionally, until softened but not browned, about 4-5 minutes. Add the celery, celery root and 1 teaspoon salt. Cook, stirring occasionally, making sure all vegetables are covered in the butter oil mixture and until the celery is tender, about 10-15 minutes depending on how much celery root and celery you have used.
Add the bay leaf, chicken broth and 2 cups water and bring to a boil. Reduce the heat to medium low and cook until the celery root is very soft, about 25-35 minutes depending on how much celery and celeriac you put into the soup. Discard the bay leaf. Add the heavy cream and return to a simmer, then remove from the heat and let cool slightly.
Working in batches, transfer the soup to a blender and puree until smooth, adding some herbs to each batch; return to the pot and reheat if needed. Stir in the celery salt and serve with toppings.