Prepping for St. Pat's....Irish Root Soup

We are having a dinner party on Tuesday to celebrate St. Patrick's Day.  Nope, there is not a bit of Irish in this household unless Amy and Chuck are home and then there is a bit of Irish on their Dad's side, but any excuse for a party is a good one so we are celebrating.

It is also my brother, Dick's birthday on Wednesday so I like to have them over each year.  When we were younger we would all go out to the bars on St Patty's Day to celebrate his birthday.  We are older and smarter now....well, at least, older....we will be in bed way before we would have left for the bar in our younger days LOL.

I posted the menu that I am serving here the other day.  This morning I went through all my recipes and made my grocery list.  We went to Mass, out to lunch and to the grocery store and then had a lazy afternoon.  I started the soup for Tuesday and then curled up with my book while it simmered.

Tomorrow, I will work on the cheesecake that I am serving for dessert so that Tuesday I will be able to concentrate on getting the entrees completed and getting ready for our guests.

I found the recipe for this soup on allrecipes.com and it was submitted by erincorks.  I adapted the recipe slightly to make 10 servings.  I also pureed the carrots with the rest of the vegetables instead boiling them seperately and adding them after the puree. Oh, and I had a lone turnip in the fridge so I threw that in there as well but I didn't adapt the recipe to show that.

This would have been a perfect soup to make your own vegetable broth using the trimmings from the vegetables that are going into the soup.  I normally would have done just that but in the interest of saving time during this busy week I used store bought.

This soup couldn't be easier.  The onion, garlic, leeks and celery went into the food processor to be coarsley chopped before going into the pot with butter to soften up while I peeled and diced the potatoes and carrots.  They got added to the pot (along with the turnip I wanted to use up) with the vegetable broth and once it began to boil, I covered the pot, turned the heat to low and let it simmer for an hour.  The hardest part was peeling the potatoes.

When the soup was done simmering I used my immersion blender to puree it until it was smooth.  Add the cream and heat through without allowing the mixture to boil.  I put this bowl together for Tingting who was my guineapig  official taste tester and she declared it delicious.  It will reheat lovely for Tuesday and I now have one less thing to worry about.

Irish Root Soup

adapted from allrecipes.com, submitted by Erincorks

1/4 c. butter

1 sweet onion, chopped

2 leeks, white and light green sections, well rinsed and chopped

2 stalks celery, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

5 potatoes, peeled and diced

5 carrots, peeled and cut into chunks

6 c. vegetable stock

1 c. heavy cream

salt and pepper to taste

chopped scallions for garnish

Melt butter in a large heavy stockpot.  Add onions, leeks, celery and garlic. Cook and stir until tender about 10 minutes.  Add potatoes, carrots and vegetable broth.  Bring to a boil, lower heat, cover and simmer for an hour.  Remove from heat and using an immersion blender, puree the solids. (You can also puree the solids in batches using a countertop blender or food processor).  Stir in the cream and allow to heat through without boiling.  Taste and season with salt and pepper.  Garnish with chopped scallions.  Print Recipe