Carrot and Parsnip Soup: Perfect way to welcome Fall | Fall Recipe - Her Mise En Place (2024)

FAQs

How to make carrot and parsnip soup less sweet? ›

Don't sweat root vegetables – particularly carrots and parsnip if you don't want intense sweetness in your recipe. Once this does happen, you can tone down the sweetness by adding spices like cumin, nutmeg or lemon juice. Deviate from the recipe to reduce sweetness.

A lot of the parsnip flavor is close to the skin, so I recommend scrubbing your parsnips well instead of peeling them! If you do choose to peel them, try to peel them thinly.

Ginger adds a lovely freshness and plays well with the carrots' sweetness. Onion and garlic give it depth of flavor. Extra-virgin olive oil adds richness. Apple cider vinegar makes it bright & tangy.

If this carrot soup is a bit too sweet for your taste, you can balance out that sweetness with 1 teaspoon of apple cider vinegar or lemon juice to boost and brighten the flavor.

I recommend peeling parsnips before adding them to recipes like this parsnip soup. If you don't peel them, you'll likely be adding a bitter taste to the soup. Why is my parsnip soup bitter? If you leave the peels on the parsnip, it can cause your soup to taste bitter.

Add flour or cornflour

Put a tablespoon of either into a small bowl and stir in 2-3 tbsp of the soup until you have a smooth mixture. Stir this back into the soup and bring it to a simmer. Cook for a few minutes to allow the starch granules to burst to thicken, and to cook out any flour flavour.

Coring is optional — and largely down to personal preference and the toughness of the core. Whilst some parsnips have a tender, more edible core, others are fibrous, woody and a bit chewy. If in doubt, cut the parsnip into quarters lengthways and remove the core if looks and feels dense.

Young parsnips don't even need peeling and are considered sweet enough to eat raw, especially grated into salads or used as a crudité vegetable. However, if parsnips have been allowed to grow too big or remain too long in storage, they tend to get woodier and bitter.

Why are parsnips so expensive? ›

Like most root vegetables, parsnips are filled with a rich history rooted in peasant food. They are more expensive to grow, harvest (the tops are cut by hand) and pack, which is why the parsnip is a bit more expensive than its orange twin, the carrot.

An acronym, of course, standing for : no politics, alcohol, religion, sex, narcotics, isms or pork.

Store in the refrigerator in an unsealed bag for 3+ weeks. If a raw parsnip becomes soft and squishy, this is a sign of rot and it should no longer be eaten.

Some vegetables, like celery root, have tough outer peels, which we always remove. Parsnips we assess on a case-by-case basis; the best flavor is actually right below the skin, so we try to avoid removing too much.

Re: Bitter parsnips

If that still doesn't help, then you can simply trim the outside and discard the woody core before cooking (that's the bitter part). Or you can add a few pinches of sugar to the cooking water and that eliminates the bitterness.

The Fix: Tone down an overly sweet dish by adding a sour, salty, or bitter ingredient to it. Sour fruit (such as blackberries or cherries), cooling herbs such as mint, and chopped nuts work well in sweets such as cakes, cookies, and pies.

Adding lime juice can to your dish can balance out the sweetness. In case, you don't want too much of tanginess in the dish you can also add vinegar white wine vinegar, red wine vinegar, balsamic vinegar.

i used about 5 carrots, a tiny bit of celery (about a finger's length?), about a thumbnail sized bit of ginger and some home made stock (the stock tastes fine) pinch of sugar, a teaspoon of cumin and some salt and pepper. I was able to save it by putting some chilli in it which covered the bitterness.