Carrot Gazpacho
A light and lovely chilled soup that's perfect for the extra hot days of summer. It's a blender soup that's completely prepared in the blender jar (except for vegetable chopping) for ease. Just refrigerate and serve!
Servings 4 people
Calories 180kcal
Ingredients
- 1 pound carrots cleaned, peeled and sliced, chopped, or shredded
- 1 bottle carrot juice - optional! - see instructions*
- 14 ounce canned unsweetened coconut milk**
- 1 small tomato, or 6 or 7 cherry tomatoes chopped
- 1 rib celery chopped
- 1 small knob ginger peeled and roughly chopped (or 2 tsp of ginger paste)
- 1 tablespoon chopped shallot
- 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
- 1 tablespoon balsamic or white balsamic vinegar
- cilantro stems and leafs
- kosher salt
Suggested garnishes:
- a swirl of reserved coconut milk
- chopped cilantro
- finely grated carrots
- chile crisp
- drizzle of evoo
Instructions
- Using a high-powered blender, add the carrots and 1/2 cup of water/carrot juice and 1/2 cup of coconut milk to the blender jar. Starting slowly, begin blending, working up the speed a few notches at time.
- If the mixture gets bogged down, stir with the plunger and/or stop blending and add additional liquids 1/4 cup at a time, and try again. The goal is move from too-thick to velvety smooth, without over-diluting the soup. You'll have to feel your way through this part a little bit, because it will depend on the tenderness of the carrots that you start with and the power of your blender.
- When the soup is moving freely in the blender from top to bottom, stop and add all of the remaining ingredients, including the coconut milk and a generous pinch or two of salt. Blend until fully smooth.
- Transfer to a container and refrigerate for at least 2 hours or overnight.
- To serve, stir well and then spoon into small bowls and top with garnishes.
Notes
* You can replace water in this recipe with bottled carrot juice, for extra flavor. This will be helpful if you're using a regular blender and need extra liquids to process everything. But don't feel you need to make that extra purchase if you don't want to.
** Why canned? A good quality canned coconut milk, like Chaokoh, will be much thicker in consistency than boxed, and will make the soup creamier (especially if you're using bottled carrot juice). You can absolutely use boxed, though. Just make sure it's unsweetened.
Notes on vegetable prep:
If you have a high-powered, high-quality blender, such as a Vitamix or Blendtec, you can worry less about the size of the vegetables before blending. Because this is a raw vegetable soup, regular blenders will probably find carrots quite the challenge, and you won't have a smooth soup. See the blog post for other tips.
Nutrition
Calories: 180kcal