Ma Wood's Carrot and Coriander Soup
My Mum got this recipe from my Aunt Joan in England but I call it Ma Wood's because I got it from my Mum. It's a fantastic soup, easy to make and always enjoyed by anyone I serve it to.
My Mum got this recipe from my Aunt Joan in England but I call it Ma Wood's because I got it from my Mum. It's a fantastic soup, easy to make and always enjoyed by anyone I serve it to.
- salt to taste
- 1 bay leaf
- 600 ml milk
- 1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice
- 3 tablespoons all purpose flour
- freshly ground pepper to taste
- 5 cups chicken stock
- 1 tablespoon ground coriander
- 3 ounces butter
- 8 ounces onions peeled and chopped
- 1 1/2 pounds carrots scraped and sliced
- 150 ml single cream
- 2 tablespoons fresh parsley chopped to garnish
- Carbohydrate 20.6926851454666 g
- Cholesterol 35.8719591429487 mg
- Fat 13.053320549413 g
- Fiber 2.61942132120346 g
- Protein 8.22433883745565 g
- Saturated Fat 7.03268485916468 g
- Serving Size 1 1 Serving (374g)
- Sodium 451.850181440601 mg
- Sugar 18.0732638242631 g
- Trans Fat 0.904865741075469 g
- Calories 230 calories
Step-by-step
- Melt butter in large saucepan, add onions and heat gently for about 5 minutes or until soft and tender.
- Add carrots, stir to coat with butter and cook a further 2-3 minutes.
- Stir in flour and cook for 1-2 minutes then gradually add stock and bring to a boil.
- Season to taste with salt and pepper and add the coriander, bay leaf, and lemon juice.
- Cover the pan and simmer gently for 30 minutes or until the carrots are very tender.
- Discard the bay leaf and puree soup in food processor.
- Pour soup into a clean pan with the milk and return to a boil.
- Once boiled turn off heat and taste. Adjust seasoning as required. Stir in the cream and reheat gently.
- Serve at once in warmed soup bowls. Garnish with parsley.
- If you wish to freeze the soup, do so before you add the milk.
The Fallacy of High Heat
Many cooks turn burners up too high when sweating root vegetables, believing speed equals efficiency, but onions require gentle, low-temperature management to break down their cellular walls without browning. Sweating the onions in butter for five minutes extracts their natural sugars slowly, creating a sweet aromatic base that high heat destroys through rapid caramelization and scorching. Ground spices like coriander benefit from brief contact with fat and flour before liquid is added, a process that toasts the fat-soluble flavor compounds and coats the starch grains to prevent raw flour lumps later.
Freshness Versus Preservation
Relying on fresh lemon juice rather than bottled concentrate introduces active organic acids that brighten the earthy sweetness of carrots, though heat diminishes these volatile compounds if added too early in the simmer. Fresh herbs such as parsley provide a vibrant pop of chlorophyll and bright green flavor notes that dried alternatives simply cannot replicate due to the loss of essential oils during dehydration. Dried bay leaves, conversely, offer a stable, woody complexity that actually improves over time as long-simmered aromatic oils permeate the starchy stock.
Texture and Modification
Achieving a velvety consistency requires pureeing the cooked carrots until completely smooth in a food processor, then integrating dairy off the heat to prevent the single cream and milk from curdling under a rolling boil. Dairy substitution is straightforward for those avoiding animal products; simply swap the butter, milk, and cream for neutral vegetable oils and unsweetened plant milks at a strict one-to-one volumetric ratio without altering the flour thickening phase. Freezing the batch successfully requires halting the process before the dairy is introduced, because emulsions containing milk solids often break and separate upon thawing.
