Smoky Parsnip and Sweet Potato Soup Recipe

Thrilled to be guesting with Be Nourished this month and to whet your appetite for our upcoming cookbook, The Whole Bowl: 50 Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free Soups and Stews, with this highly flavored, warming soup. The Smoky Parsnip and Sweet Potato soup gets its smoke from chipotle and a back note of allspice adds rounded depth. Earthy parsnips take well to warming spices (I’ve used them in place of pumpkin in pie with success), as do sweet potatoes. Hearty red miso finishes the dish with a hint of salty, umami flavor (those who are avoiding soy can substitute chickpea miso for the red miso).

This easy-to-make soup demonstrates how simple it is to build a great gluten-free and dairy-free creamy soup sans cream: Start with a nourishing broth, season well, and add a delicious thickener, in this case parsnips and sweet potatoes, in place of the cream. See below for a few more tips from The Whole Bowl to get you started.

The Whole Bowl is also Rebecca’s long-awaited new cookbook, the first since she won both a Julia Child Award and a James Beard Award for her Splendid Grain. As many Be Nourished Readers know, Rebecca was one of the earliest Westerners to write about the healing properties of food (and the first writer in the U.S. to “discover” quinoa!), and she’s been speaking the gluten- and dairy-free language for decades. I have learned so much from Rebecca over the years, and am grateful for our collaboration on The Whole Bowl.

Serves 4 to 6

2 tablespoons virgin coconut oil or extra-virgin olive oil
1 large onion, chopped
2 garlic cloves, chopped
¼ to ½ teaspoon ground chipotle chile, to spice enjoyment level
½ teaspoon ground allspice
¼ teaspoon ground turmeric
¼ teaspoon paprika
¼ teaspoon freshly grated nutmeg
1 large sweet potato (about 12 ounces), peeled and chopped
2 medium parsnips (about 12 ounces), chopped
6 cups bone broth or vegetable broth
Unrefined salt
1 ½ tablespoons red miso
1 tablespoon fresh lemon juice, or to taste
Garam masala

Heat the oil in a large saucepan over medium heat. Add the onion and sauté until very soft, about 10 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for another minute. Add the chipotle, allspice, turmeric, paprika, and nutmeg and cook for 2 minutes.

Add the sweet potato, parsnips, and stock and season lightly with salt (remembering the miso will add saltiness). Raise the heat to high and bring to a boil, then lower the heat to low, cover, and simmer for 30 minutes. Ladle out about ½ cup of the broth into a bowl and whisk in the miso. Turn off the heat and stir the mixture into the soup (do not reheat to ensure that the living cultures in the miso stay live).

Transfer the soup to a blender and blend until smooth. Return the soup to the saucepan, stir in the lemon juice, and adjust the seasonings.

Spoon into bowls and serve, with a pinch of garam masala sprinkled onto each serving.

A few more tips on thickening your gluten- and dairy-free soups from The Whole Bowl:

• Cook a little rice into the soup and blend it in
• Mash or blend part of the soup
• Blend in an avocado
• Add coconut milk
• Swap chickpea flour or rice flour for wheat flour

Leda Scheintaub trained as a chef at the Natural Gourmet Institute in New York and has been a recipe developer and tester, editor, and writer for the past twelve years. She is the author of Cultured Foods for Your Kitchen: 100 Recipes Featuring the Bold Flavors of Fermentation. Her next book, with Rebecca Wood, is The Whole Bowl: Gluten-Free, Dairy-Free Soups and Stews. Visit her at www.ledaskitchen.com and on Facebook and Twitter.