Looking for a recipe that adds a little smokey heat into your weeknight? Then, this recipe is for you. It came from one of the many cookbooks that has inspired me on snowy Saturday mornings (or any Saturday morning). This soup has warmed us up enough to grace our table quite a few weeknights, and that is a challenging feat considering how the collection of cookbooks has grown – there is nothing but options.

Sometime days I get lost in an extensive recipe with lots of ingredients and prep work and then there are days where I appreciate a small amount of ingredients to work with and prep.  That is the ease of this recipe. I only need the patience to make sure the sweet potatoes get tender before blending.  It doesn’t hurt that I love using an immersion blender for this, but I am often informed how I miss a sweet potato chunk or two (let’s call those a fun surprise).

The soup itself has a surprisingly light feel to it. There is depth of flavor that the chipotle and cumin bring and a fullness from the startch of the sweet potatoes, but it leaves a clean bite, which is what I enjoy most about this soup.

We have most often paired this with some sourdough bread, roasted cauliflower (roasted with nutritional yeast – soooo good!), topped with either queso fresco or a sour cream based crema, and a pumpkin seed based granola.  No matter what we top it with, it has been a winning soup for us each time.  Make it your own with your choice of toppings or sides.

Sweet Potato + Chipotle Soup

Ingredients:

• 2 Tbls extra virgin olive oil
• 1 large red onion, finely diced – approximately 1 1/2 cups
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 5 springs cilantro
• 3/4 tsp cumin
• Sea salt
• 1 1/2 Tbls chipotle in adobo, more or less depending on your preference
• 6 cups sweet potates, peeled and diced
• 6 cups vegetable stock

Preparation:

Heat out in a large pot over medium heat.  Add onion, garlic, cilantro, cumin, and a good pinch of salt.  Cook for around 10 mins, stirring often, until onions are soft but not browning.

Stir in chipotle and sweet potato until combined. Then add the stock and turn up the heat to bring it to a boil. Once boiling, turn down heat to simmer the soup for around 30 minutes until potatoes are soft – test with the tip of a soft knife, it should slide right in with no resistance.

Once soft, remove from heat and take out the cilantro.  Then puree the soup either with an immersion blender or in batches in a stand blender. Salt or pepper to taste. 

Serve with fresh cilantro leaves, queso fresco, crema, or pumpkin seed based granola.  Enjoy!!!

*Recipe from It’s All Good cookbook by Gwyneth Paltrow.