Springtime Beet and Sorrel Soup - The Red House Project

A tangy, springtime soup to use up the overwintered beets — Jump to Recipe

A Black dinner plate with mashed potatoes, sprouting broccoli, and a burger with pan sauce, French style.

Delicious with fresh sourdough bread

We’ve been having a long, chilly early spring this year, and I keep craving soup. I’m working my way through the overwintered vegetables to make room for the summer crops to go in, and this week I pulled the last of the beets. I had just replenished my supply of beef stock, I had bread to pop in the oven, and there were a few new potatoes and a leek that I found at the farm stand. The sorrel in the herb garden is ready to pick— its lemony tang adds a springtime vibrancy to the beets. Boiled eggs from the neighbor’s chickens add a bit of protein and make a nice garnish.

Beet and Sorrel Soup

with potato, leek, sour cream, beef stock, and hardboiled egg

Ingredients

Beets not shown— they are in the sink. Also not shown: carrots and potatoes

- 3 large, 5 medium, or a bunch of little scruffy overwintered beets. If you are lucky, you might have one or two white beets you can put in, too.

- 2-5 new potatoes, depending on size

- 1 head of garlic

- 1 leek

- 1-2 carrots

- beef stock

- sour cream- mine is in a jar because I made it. It’s really easy

- 1 bunch of sorrel

- butter

- olive oil

- spices: paprika, allspice, mace, dry ginger, black and white pepper, dill seed or pollen, bay leaf

- eggs, for an optional garnish

You may have noticed the dried red peppers on the tray. These are txorixero peppers, which are a basque sweet pepper that I grew last year. If I ground them up they would be paprika.

Here they are! There’s a rutabaga or two in there, too.

Tools

- sheet tray

- dutch oven or pot to cook soup

- sharp knife and cutting board

- vegetable peeler

- Immersion blender. If you don’t have one, there are still options.

Directions

We’re going to roast the beets and garlic before making the soup, so plan some roasting and then some cooling time.

Prep Ingredients:

Future blog posts will include a beet-stained cutting board.

1. Wash and trim your beets but don’t peel them.

1. Separate the head of garlic into individual cloves but don’t peel them either.

1. Put the beets and garlic on the sheet tray, drizzle with olive oil and grind some pepper over them, and then pop them into a 400 degree oven.

1. Put your eggs in cold water on the stove, and with the lid off, turn them on medium high and bring them to a boil. The moment the water boils, pull the eggs off the heat, put the lid on, and set a timer for 7 minutes. (5 if you want the yolks to be a bit runny). As soon as the timer goes off, put the pot in the sink and run cold water in without pouring out the hot water. Run until the water stays cold.

1. Trim the tough green tops off the leek, and the root end. Wash it carefully, because they tend to hide dirt in their layers.

1. Cut the leek in half the long way, and then into little half-circle slices about 1/8″ wide.

1. Cut the sorrel into 1/8″ ribbons across the width of the leaf.

1. Peel your carrot and dice it.

1. Clean your potatoes and dice them.

1. While all this prep is happening, check on the garlic. It will cook faster than the beets, and you can pull it off the sheet tray early.

1. When the garlic is cool, peel it and chop it into mush.

1. When your beets are roasted, about 40 minutes, pull them out of the oven and let them cool enough to handle.

1. When the beets are cool, peel them and dice them.

This is what I did with the dried Txorixero peppers— I put them in a bowl of boiling hot water to rehydrate, then I poured off the water and pushed the peppers through a wire strainer to make a puree. You could use a tablespoon or two of tomato paste, or regular sweet paprika.

Make the Soup:

1. Melt 2-3 Tablespoons of butter in your soup pot, and add your carrots, potatoes, and beets. Toss in a bay leaf.

1. Gently cook the veggies in the butter until the potatoes and carrots lose their rawness. Put in the leeks and cook for a few minutes until they start to go limp and transparent.

1. (At this point I put in my pepper puree and stirred it all around to cook for a few more minutes)

1. Add the beef stock. Mine is very strong, so I usually add my half pint jar and then top off with another 1-2 cups of water until the veggie pieces move freely. If you are using store-bought don’t dilute it, just use more, and please make sure you buy low sodium because you can always add more salt but you can’t take it away.

1. Simmer your soup until the potatoes start to fall apart and the beets and carrots are fully cooked and softening. Use the immersion blender or a potato masher to smash up about 1/3-1/2 of the vegetables. Chunks are good.

1. Season with 1/8 teaspoon of allspicke, 1/8 teaspoon mace, 1/4 teaspoon ground ginger, and 2-3 teapoons of paprika. Season to taste with salt and black and white pepper. If you have dill seed, grind it and use about 1/4 teaspoon. If you happen to have dill pollen, use that instead. Taste, and then use more of any of the spices you like.

1. At the end of cooking, pull the soup off the heat and stir in about 1 cup of sour cream, and then stir in the sorrel.

To Serve

Top with a dollop of sour cream, and a sliced hardboiled egg. A bit of horseradish is yummy if you have it. Sprinkle some salt on the egg, and give it a grind of pepper and a little sprinkle of dill pollen.

Did you try it?

Let us know what you think! We’d love to see pictures and hear about your results.

Please join our mailing list for regular but not exhausting email updates, and follow us on twitter, facebook, instagram and pinterest. See Below!