Celery Root Cream Soup with Caramelized Apple
Soup, Soup, Soup
Do you eat soup every day? Lots of Hungarians, including my mum, eat soup very often, almost every single day. You can find many variations of soups between our recipes. And when the harvest of celery started this month, I immediately made this cream soup. I think it would not have been so delicious on its own. It needed another characteristic taste, which complements it well. This is not the first time when I made celery root cream soup. Before I have made it with caramelized pears which was also very delicious. But this time I had lot of apples at home and decided to use them. It was a good decision. Sweet caramelized apple is a great match with celery root.
Elstar Is My Favorite
I used my favorite apple variety, Elstar. Its skin is usually a bit rust-colored, inside white and has a pleasant sweet-sour taste. Elstar is ideal for juice, apple sauce and as a dried fruit too. It is an apple cultivar that was first developed in the Netherlands in Elst in 1950s and quickly became popular, especially in Europe and it was introduced to America in 1972. Of course, I used Elstar, but you can change it to your favorite apple.
Celery Root
Celery root is also known as celeriac, celery knob, or turnip-rooted celery. It can be prepared in many ways, but it’s a very divisive vegetable. People either love it or hate it, there is no in between. I’ve also met people who didn’t know celery root, just celery.
It is vegetable that is hard to peel because of the many nooks and crannies, you need a really sharp knife. When you buy a large, 1 kg celery root, about 700-750 gram is usable after peeling.
It is a bit underestimated vegetable, although it is an excellent source of vitamin K, a very good source of fiber, vitamin C, and phosphorus and a fair source of potassium. Like other sources of dietary fiber, celeriac makes you feel full when you eat it.
Try my Celery Root, Sweet Potato and Apple Salad, it’s also very delicious.
Celery Root Cream Soup with Caramelized Apple
Equipment
- Immersion Blender
Ingredients
Soup
- 1.3 kg celery root about 1 kg after peeling, chopped
- 150 gram sweet potato white flesh, peeled and chopped
- 1 medium onion finely cut
- 2 tbsp ghee or butter
- 1 liter chicken stock warm
- 60 ml almond cream
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp pepper freshly ground
Caramelized Apples
- 2 pcs apple I used Elstar
- 2 tbsp ghee or butter
- 1 tbsp coconut sugar
Instructions
- Melt 2 tbsp ghee or butter in a soup pan, add onion and sauté for 2-3 minutes, until translucent.
- Add chopped celery root and sweet potato, sauté them for 2 minutes.
- Add chicken stock and cook on medium high heat until first boiling, then reduce the heat to medium low and cook for 20-25 minutes, until celery root is tender.
- Blend the cooked celery root with immersion blender until creamy.
- Add the almond cream, stir it and season with salt and pepper. Add more almond cream if you think the soup is too thick. It has to be creamy.
- When the celery root is half cooked, start to prepare the caramelized apple. Peeled, cored and cut 1.5 apples to small dices. Cut the rest half apple to slices.
- Melt 2 tbsp ghee or butter in a non-stick frying pan.
- Add coconut sugar then it’s melted, add diced apples in it and sauté for 2-3 minutes, until they are caramelized.
- Spoon caramelized dices to bowl (keep the juice in the pan), then place the apple slices into the pan and caramelized them for 2 minutes. Be careful, do not overcook, they have to keep their shape!
- Serve the celery cream soup into soup plate then place caramelized apple to the top and drizzle with the juice of the caramelized apple.