This Hairy Bikers carrot and coriander soup follows the soup method from their British Classics cookbook. It uses the same butter base, the same long fry and the same splash of milk at the end. Six bowls come to about 165 calories each.
The spicing comes from their Mediterranean Adventure book, where carrots take crushed coriander seed, cumin, garlic and orange zest. Veggie Feasts is blunt about the fat, saying “oil doesn’t work well here”, so butter leads and the oil is only there to stop it burning.
The ratio is what makes or breaks this one. A kilo of carrots to a litre of stock sounds heavy, but it is what British Classics does with its root veg. Use less and you get orange water.
Hairy Bikers Carrot and Coriander Soup
Description
Butter, onions and carrots cook slowly for fifteen minutes. Then crushed coriander seed, cumin and orange zest go in, followed by hot stock. This Hairy Bikers carrot and coriander soup blends smooth and finishes with milk and a squeeze of lemon.
Ingredients
Instructions
- Fry the carrots and onions: Melt the butter with the oil in a large pan. Add the onions and carrots, then cook gently for 15 minutes until the onions are soft.
- Add the spices: Stir in the garlic, crushed coriander seeds, cumin seeds, orange zest and the chopped coriander stems. Cook for 2 minutes.
- Pour in the stock: Add the hot stock and bring it to the boil. Season with salt and white pepper.
- Simmer: Turn the heat down and simmer for 25 minutes, until the carrots are completely soft.
- Blend: Take the pan off the heat and blitz until smooth with a stick blender or in a food processor.
- Finish: Stir in the milk and warm it through. Add a squeeze of lemon, then scatter the coriander leaves over each bowl.
FAQs
Why fry the carrots for fifteen minutes?
Root vegetables need time in butter to turn sweet. British Classics gives them a full fifteen minutes before any stock, and carrots behave the same way. Three minutes will not do it.
You can smell the difference. At five minutes the pan still smells raw, but by fifteen the onions have gone soft and the carrots colour at the edges. Their lentil and bacon soup only needs five, because there the bacon fat does that job instead.
Why so much carrot for one litre of stock?
Because thin is the usual failure with this soup. A kilo to a litre keeps it tasting of carrot rather than stock, and it matches what British Classics does with its own root veg.
Most versions online use half that. If you have ever made carrot soup that tasted of nothing, this is almost always why. You can add a splash of stock at the end to loosen it, but you cannot put the carrot flavour back in.
Why both coriander seed and fresh coriander?
They taste completely different. The seeds are warm and slightly citrusy, and they need heat to open up, so they go in with the garlic. The fresh leaves are sharp and green, and heat kills them.
Use the full 50g of fresh coriander, which is about two supermarket packets. It looks like too much and it is not. The stems go in early with the aromatics, so nothing gets wasted.
Can I make it in a slow cooker?
Yes, but do the fifteen minute fry in a pan first. A slow cooker cannot brown anything, so skipping that leaves you with boiled carrots and a flat soup.
After that, tip it all in with the stock and cook on low for four hours. Blend at the end, then stir the milk in off the heat. Their pea and ham soup needs the same approach, because its first step has to happen on the hob too.
Why milk and not cream?
British Classics finishes with milk rather than cream, 150ml of it, and the same amount works here. Carrots are already sweet, so cream makes the whole thing heavy.
Milk keeps it light at 165 calories a bowl. Their goulash soup goes the other way with soured cream on top, though that one is a beef soup at 390 calories and can carry it. Add the milk off the heat so it does not split.
