With the recent hit of super cold weather, what’s better than a hot bowl of soup! Honestly any kind of soup is good but I really like thick and creamy soups – those just hit a different spot.

The star of today’s soup is the humble sweet potato. This is one of my favourite ingredients in general to cook with because they’re just so good for you. I love their sweetness – natural sweetness, of course – and they’re so versatile. I would choose a sweet potato any day over a regular yellow or white potato.

To go along with the sweet potato, I added some carrots and an apple. Yes I know those are also very sweet items but that’s what I wanted and it’s fine because these are all natural sugars. However, I did counteract some of the sweetness with the seasoning. I used some ginger powder, curry powder as well as black pepper, all of which gave some warmth to the soup. Further to the seasoning, I only used veggie broth as a source of salt and did not add any additional salt because I didn’t think it was necessary.

The great thing about using such a starchy vegetable like sweet potato is that when you blend it, it gets so creamy that you don’t even need to add actual cream or milk to the soup. This is the perfect dairy-free and vegan recipe. Also because there is no dairy, the soup is actually almost fat free. There is only a touch of oil used to saute the vegetables in the beginning, that’s it.

As you can see in the recipe, I only used three cups of broth so this was a relatively thick soup. If you wanted it a little thinner you could just add more broth but I like it thick like this. Remember though, you can always add more but you can’t take out water. So I would blend it first and then add more broth if desired.

This is just such a perfect comforting soup. Serve it with a salad or as a starter for any main course.

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Ingredients:

• 1 tbsp olive oil
• 1 onion, chopped
• 1 large sweet potato, chopped (~3 cups)
• 2 carrots, chopped (~1 cup)
• 1 apple, chopped (I used gala)
• 1 tsp curry powder
• 1/2 tsp ginger powder
• 3 cups vegetable broth*
• Black pepper, to taste

Directions:

1. Heat oil over medium high heat in a large pot. Add onion and saute 3 minutes until starting to soften. Add sweet potato and carrot, saute another 3 minutes, followed by the apple.
2. Stir in curry powder, ginger powder and let cook 30 seconds until fragrant. Pour in 3 cups broth and combine. Bring to a boil, then cover and reduce heat to low. Simmer 15-20 minutes until vegetables are fork tender
3. Carefully use blender or immersion blender to puree soup until smooth. *If you want a thinner soup, add 1-2 cups extra broth at this point and then bring back to a simmer. Season with pepper, to taste, and serve.