Years ago, I had an absolutely amazing pureed vegan parsnip soup. Simple, velvety, and luscious. A beautiful winter soup.
Inspired by that memory, I ordered some parsnips in our December grocery order, figuring that a recipe would be easy enough to find. However, once those parsnips arrived, I couldn't find a pure parsnip soup recipe on any of my favorite sites. Instead, the experts seemed to have ever better soups with parsnips, and as such, I decided to make Cook's Country Hearty Vegetable Soup.
Unfortunately, due to what I can only assume is significant user error, my heavily modified version of this soup was a disaster. I substituted cranberry beans for the cannellini beans, which didn't work at all (the cranberry beans were too large and I think overcooked), and the lack of peas, spinach, and rosemary presumably had an effect too. Oh, and I also modified the ratio of parsnips, potatoes, carrots, and onions based on what I had on hand. And used a toasted English muffin in place of "hearty white sandwich bread." So lots of modifications.
The only good thing about this soup was how good balsamic vinegar tasted in it. It definitely imparted a nice, sweet tangy flavor to this otherwise thick, depressingly boring, and poorly textured soup. So I am glad I learned about balsamic's potential role in soup, otherwise this was a soup I was happy to throw away.
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