Vegan Carrot Soup with Caramelized Onions
This creamy carrot soup is vegan, gluten free, and paleo friendly. Packed with sweetness from the carrots and a deep umami from the caramelized onions, this soup is the perfect thing to perk up a cold grey day. Jump to the recipe.
It wouldn’t be exactly true to say that I woke up to rain. Still, a heavy blanket of fog swaddled our little yellow house on the hill, and the ground was wet enough that I can imagine it may have rained overnight.
Bundled up in my red winter coat, I leashed up the pooch and went for a long walk in McLaren Park. Despite what folks say, we do have seasons in California.
Sometimes, we live with evidence of all of them at once. Just today, as Ruby and I tromped through mud and autumnal fallen yellow leaves, I also bathed in the smell of winter’s piney conifers. These firs, lush yet strangely expectant, as if they’re just waiting to be strung with shiny glass balls.
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Just a short way down the path, I was surprised to find evidence of the first blackberry blossoms, a reminder that summer will come and provide mounds of juicy berries- rife for the foraging.
I found pink cottage roses wet with dew, spiders spinning sparkly webs, dazzlingly-bright yellow flowers, shy mushrooms peeking from beneath blades of grass, and nasturtiums- from whom I stole a sip of spicy nectar. When I left the cover of the tress and came upon a grassy playground, robins sang while hunting for fat little worms.
You see all the seasons, right there before me.
As we neared the end of our walk, a few raindrops fell. Tucking my camera into my coat and quickening my pace, I looked forward to the decidedly wintery soup waiting for me at home.
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- 2 large onions, sliced
- 3 tablespoonsolive oil
- 2.5 lbs carrots peeled and sliced into coins
- 1 large yukon gold potato peeled and cut into ½ inch pieces
- ½ cup celery sliced
- 16 oz carton vegetable stock- homemade or low sodium variety
- salt and pepper to taste
- Parsley leaves, loosely packed
- Lemon thyme, leaves removed from stem
- Olive oil
- Sea salt
- Piment d'espelette
- Cook onions and olive oil over low heat until well-caramelized and a dark golden brown, stirring infrequently (about 50-60 minutes)
- Add carrots, potato, and celery and cook for another 10 minutes, tossing well to coat with olive oil and onions.
- Add vegetable stock, turn heat to medium high, and bring to a rapid boil. Cook until vegetables are very tender almost falling apart- about 20 minutes.
- Blend with an immersion blender until completely smooth, thinning with just a little bit of stock, water, or milk of your choice if you'd like a thinner soup
- Season with salt and pepper and serve with herb oil and a sprinkling of piment d'espelette if using
- While the soup is cooking, finely chop ¾ cup parsley and 2 sprigs thyme in food processor until very tiny.
- Add ½ cup olive oil and give it a little whirl. Rest the herb oil at room temperature for at least 20 minutes.
- When ready to serve, strain through a fine mesh sieve and add one teaspoon of the herbs back to the strained oil and whisk to incorporate.
Thanks for sharing, I cant wait to make this! Happy New Year & I love your Ruby. If you get a chance look at my profile & see my Zoe she is a 153 lb English Mastiff love my puppy!!! Your recipes are the BEST!!!!
Oh Ginny, I love Mastiffs. I don\’t see how to get to your profile though, I\’d love to see your baby. And thanks so much for the recipe love. I really appreciate it. Happy New Year to you.
Gorgeous photos and that soup looks fabulous!!
Thanks Dottie. I hope your New Year brings love and joy and much deliciousness.
What a lovely walk, I could almost feel the chilly air on my cheeks! The soup sounds perfect for this weather too, I will let you know when I try it. Happy New Year!
Love your clicks! They're as vibrant as the color of your soup. Browned onions add flavor to this dish…Happy New Year! I look forward to a lot more posts…Thanks for sharing!
sounds yummy and hearty!!
Oh my goodness, that picture of your pup near your soup bowl totally made my night. I recognize that face from my own doggie– "can I have some? Plllleeeeeaseeee?" So stinkin' cute.
The soup looks wonderful, and those pictures are GORGEOUS. I will take your semi-seasons any day over the cold grayness that is Philly right now…
Love all your photos!! This soup is the bomb!! I made it one chilly day just recently and me and my hubby loved it!! I made a bigger batch and we had it the next day for lunch. It's has a nice flavor and definitely comforting! 🙂
Thanks Jamie,
I\’m so glad you enjoyed it. We have had it several times now. I made it with dark red/purple carrots most recently, and it really rocked my world. Ah, soup. Makes me happy every time.
X
Sabrina
I made this and it was wonderful. Didn't have vegie stock so I used chicken broth and just added some spices. It was absolutely wonderful! I will make it again and again!
Jennie,
So glad you liked it. It\’s one of my faves. In the summer, you could thin in and eat it cool. Would be amazing.
i'll bet this would be delightful with the carrot tops instead of the parsley….. 🙂
Hello
I love your blog & photos! Can you please tell me which camera and lenses did you use to meke the photos above?
Thank you!
Best regards from island Brac, Croatia 🙂
I used a canon 60D and probably used my 50mm 1.4 for a lens.
Thank you for this glorious recipe!
I think it’s the best soup I’ve ever had; seriously. Wow.
I am going out for an autumn walk and coming home and making this soup! Love your atmosphere filled description! Thank you!
Thx for the recipe, and you shouldn't go hiking in Chuck Taylors , bad for your back =P
Thanks 😉
It wasn\’t exactly a hike though- just a walk through a large urban park. Now that I live in the country, we actually hike a lot and I live in my Ahnu hiking boots.
is this correct :cook onions and oil for 50-60 min?
Yes, the key to caramelized onions is low and slow. To get a really deep caramelized flavor, it takes about an hour. I like to do them in big batches so that I always have some in the fridge. You can go for less time, but you won\’t get that sweet French onion soup flavor.
With only 8 oz of broth, this must only make enough for 2 servings. Is that right? I chop/slice my sweet onions and put in the freezer for winter use, should I use about 3 cups? I share your posts with all my friends that garden and eat fresh/local. What a wonderful site.
Thank you so much for your kind words. I also make use of large amounts of caramelized onions. Later today, I am filling my slow cooker with onions so I have them ready for thanksgiving. I\’ll probably do a total of 10lbs this week. If you freeze them in ice cube trays, it is very convenient to pull out one cube at a time to add to a recipe.
To answer your question, this recipe makes about four servings of thick soup. You can add a bit more broth for a thinner soup.
This recipe is also very easily scaled up for a crowd.
I am so intrigued by caramelizing onions in the slow cooker. I love using caramelized onions to thicken gravy for turkey for a gluten free gravy. About how long does it take to do in the slow cooker? I saw that you said that you planned on doing about 10 pounds and freezing. Can you please share any tips for this? Love the idea of having this on hand. Thank you.
Hi Winnie, I do my onions in the slow cooker all the time. I do between 5-10 lbs and I slice them thinly, put them in the slow cooker on high and let it go for about 12 hours. When the onions are caramelized, I pull the top off the slow cooker and turn the heat down and let them cook until all of the liquid has evaporated between 3-5 hours. Don’t skip the last step because so much of the flavor is right in that liquid.
PS, your gravy sounds totally divine!
Hi – I saw this comment about doing the onions in the slow cooker – how about doing the entire soup in the slow cooker? I would love to make this soup as a post Thanksgiving treat. How do you recommend adjusting the recipe? – thanks!
Hi Zakia, I would do the onions first. Just onions and a bit of oil in the slow cooker on high for 6-8 hours (overnight would work great) and then in the last hours of cooking, remove the lid to reduce the liquid. Don’t throw the liquid out, all the onion flavor is concentrated in there. You must reduce it to make the onions taste good.
Note, if you are only doing the amount of onions necessary for this soup recipe, you could skip the step of reducing the liquid and just reduce the amount of liquid called for in the soup recipe.
Then I’d add all the rest of the ingredients and cook on low for another 8 hours or until everything is super soft and mushy- then proceed to the blending step.
I haven’t done this, so I can’t say that it will work perfectly that way, but it should be a good guideline.
What a cute dog! The soup sounds terrific, carrot soup is definitely one of my favorites 😉
Thanks Jessica! My poor Ruby passed away just over a year ago, but I am so lucky to have Olive and Benny now. You can see lots of pictures on my site.
How many does this feed. I’m having a dinner party and this is perfect.
Hi Sophia,
This should make 8 small servings or 4-6 larger servings.
Have fun at your party!
Sabrina
How many ounces of vegetable broth are in the “carton” that you used? I’m guessing about 8 from the comments below, but I’d like to be sure as they sell two different size cartons at my grocery store.
Hi Michele,
Great catch. it’s actually a quart/litre sized carton.
I scaled the original recipe up for a larger portion.
Sabrina
Seems so delicious this soup. I’ll definitely try. ☺☺
Thank you Nandini! I hope you’ll enjoy it.
This recipe looks amazing! Quick question: have you tried freezing this, if so does it freeze well?
I am expecting in January and planning for delicious healthy meals ahead of time!!
Hi Sara, congratulations on your upcoming addition! I haven’t frozen this particular soup, but I freeze blended soups all the time. This should freeze beautifully.
I don’t have an immersion blender, suggestions on what I should do instead?
Hey Sarah, super simple to get it pureed in a regular blender, high speed belnder, food processor, or food mill as well. Just add small amounts of the soup if you’re working in a regular blender as they can sometimes get a bit slowed with the thick soups.
Thank you for sharing this recipe! I made a batch for my family when I was home for the holidays, and then another big batch for myself tonight (some for leftovers this week, some to freeze). It was nice with the bread bowls I got the other day too. I video recorded my process – do you mind if I post my cooking of your recipe on YouTube? So far there’s very little on my channel, but I’m hoping to add more cooking videos in the future as I work on becoming more proficient. I’ll include a link to this page, of course!
Your recipe looks great and I will be making it soon, but is it a good idea to freeze in glass jars?
I hope you love it as much as we do. As for the glass jars, pint-sized Mason jars are recommended for freezing.
Just make sure any contents have completely cooled before you put the jar in the freezer and leave plenty of headspace.
Made this soup and loved it! Thanks for sharing.
AWWW thank you, Angie! This is the reason I started blogging in the first place. I love sharing recipes 🙂
How many servings does this recipe make? And how large is each serving. Thanks!
Hi Christina,
This is an older recipe, and I don’t have the exact measurements on hand, but it should serve 6-8 people if you count about a cup of soup per person. Hope you enjoy the soup!
Sabrina
This soup was so delicious with 6 servings ! We loved it!
Awww thanks Angy! Comments like yours are the reason I started blogging. The idea of “sharing a meal” with someone I’ve never met is the most appealing idea in the world, to me. So glad you enjoyed it.
Made this to serve alongside Tofu Dill Salad Sandwiches for mine and my husband’s lunch this week and I included the herb oil. I chose this recipe because of the minimal (and cheap!) ingredients. We’re not disappointed! Thanks!
Oh yay! I’m so glad you enjoyed it!
Hi Sabrina! Made the carrot soup today. Turned out pretty good but since i like my soup a little thicker I had to add about a cup of milk. I didn’t have any more broth or I would have used that. After that I felt like it was a little bland. When I added the salt, pepper, herb infused oil it helped. Any suggestion of what I could have added in to bring some flavor back in? The salt definitely helped but I hate to add too much salt so I would have rather used some sort of spice but not sure which would be good.
If you like thicker soup, I’d just cook it with less broth in the beginning or even add extra veg. As far as spices, you can go in so many directions. You could do a curry spice which would be so warming and delicious- if you did that, I might switch up the herb oil to be cilantro, ginger, and parsley. You could even go Mexican with a bit of chili, lime, and some cumin! If you wanted to say in the Euro/French family, I would try some dried tarragon and a bit of dried mustard. I’d love to know what you try and see how it turns out.
Your dog is so cute! I love how you put potatoes in this, I bet it really helps with a great thickness and mouthfeel!
Your pup is adorable! This soup sounds amazing! I’m always looking for new soups to try, thanks for the recipe!
Oh, this soup is just stunning!!! I’m also loving all of your other photos, they’re so atmospheric and pretty; it makes me want to venture outside with my camera!
This is a very nice and simple recipe that looks sooo good. I felt as tho I was walking next to you thru all your beautiful pictures!
This cold weather definitely has me craving warming and nourishing soups…so this carrot soup (I love carrots!) is right up my alley!
I love these recipes because they aim for a wider audience within the community, It’s very hard to find some good vegan recipes at the moment and this one warms my heart!
This sounds so delicious with those caramelized onions! Perfect for this chilly weather.