A restorative soup for spring renewal
Lightly roasting fresh vegetables helps bring out new flavors and supports your immune system. When onions and garlic roast, they start to taste sweet and caramelized. Carrots and parsnips turn a warm golden-brown. For this carrot soup recipe, we add fresh ginger near the end for a zesty taste and to help with digestion.
One serving of this soup gives you about half of the vegetables you need in a day, along with soluble fiber, potassium and carotenoids. Toppings like Greek yogurt, coconut flakes and black sesame seeds help your body absorb carotenoids and other nutrients that need fat to work well. Carotenoids are antioxidants that help protect your cells and can turn into Vitamin A, which supports your immune system, night vision and healthy skin.
Follow along with this Healthy Teaching Kitchen demonstration
A common myth is that cooking destroys the nutrients in food. But when you roast vegetables until they are lightly golden-brown, they form new antioxidants through something called the “Maillard reaction.” Some antioxidants that are already in vegetables, like carotenoids in carrots, also become easier for the body to use after cooking. Roasting softens the vegetables’ cell walls and helps release bright pigments like beta-carotene. When you puree the roasted vegetables into a smooth texture, the cell walls break down even more, which makes the carotenoids even easier for your body to absorb. In one study, pureed cooked carrots gave people about 1.6 times more absorbable beta-carotene than raw carrots.
Whole Health resilience
Root vegetables are tough and able to survive in many conditions. They adapt to change, search for nutrients, grow around rocks and do well even when the environment is hard. This tasty root vegetable soup encourages us to focus on our own “roots,” too. This spring, let your Whole Health be supported by Food and Drink that help restore balance from the inside out.
Author: Jason Davis