#10: Fall-on-a-Spoon Sweet Potato Soup (slow-cooker)

Dear Tiff,
I haven't posted for awhile, because I was eating through my leftovers to make more fridge space before I cooked anything that would create more leftovers. This is what happens when you live alone (less people to eat the food) and have a tiny fridge.

Anyways. I love sweet potatoes. Growing up, we pretty much only had them in the candied style, during the holidays. But I just adore them, and I've been trying them out in different less-desserty ways because I think they're just amazing, and pretty good for you too, and thus should not be relegated to the holidays. At some point I'll have to put up my sweet potato chili recipe that you've been asking for for awhile now, but today I made a delicious sweet potato soup.

Fall-on-a-Spoon Sweet Potato Soup

This was inspired by/adapted from a great post by Kristen Swensson Sturt (and she, of course, adapted it from another blogger). I like adaptable food. I like Kristen too, and I recommend you read her post because it was a very entertaining and informative read, and I'm likely to follow her for further inspiration. She made me smile :). It was actually Kristen who gave me the phrase "Fall on a Spoon" with which I decided to name this recipe. Credit where credit is due; that phrase perfectly describes this soup. Ahhh. Yum.

The Basics:
Prep time: About 10 minutes, then in the slow cooker all day
Good for leftovers: yes! You can even freeze some for a rainy day when you don't feel like cooking.
servings: At least 8 meal-sized servings. If you are using it as a side-dish, serve smaller portions to stretch it further
cost: less than $5

Ingredients:
2 medium or large sweet potatoes (yams will work fine as well), peeled and cut into small chunks
1 smallish onion or 1/2 medium onion, chopped
1 cup baby carrots or 2-3 small-medium carrots, peeled and chopped
1/2 teaspoon cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon pepper
1-2 tablespoons curry powder
a shake of red pepper flakes (optional for some extra zip)
1/4 teaspoon ground cloves (optional)
4 cups (1 quart) chicken broth
1 cup milk
1 tablespoon maple syrup
brown sugar to taste

The Process:
Peel/chop your carrots, sweet potatoes, and onions. (Celery would be good too but I didn't have any). Add all ingredients except for milk, brown sugar, and maple syrup to the slow cooker. If you made your own chicken broth and its still frozen, that's fine! Just thaw it in the microwave a couple minutes while you're chopping so that you can cut the bag off, and dump the whole frozen chunk in your slow cooker. I store my chicken broth in quart size bags so I didn't even have to measure.

Cook on low all day. If you're around, you can stir it every once in awhile, but it won't be the end of the world. I put mine in around 9am this morning, came back after work around 6:30pm and it was great! What have I said before about soups? They are usually safe to just keep on cooking; in fact, they will often taste better the longer they cook!

Puree your mixture in the blender - usually doing 1-2 cups at a time works best. You could also use an immersion blender if you have one (I don't. But I did finally rectify my blender situation so I do have a blender now). Pour it back into the slow cooker; stir in the milk and syrup and let it cook on high for a few more minutes. (This last step isn't necessary, but your milk was likely cold, and you want your soup to be hot, so if you taste it and its lukewarm you should probably let it heat up for a few more minutes.) Test taste and add brown sugar to get it to your preferred level of sweetness. Serve hot with maple syrup drizzled over bowl. (I didn't do this to mine so you won't see it in the picture).

This was delicious, and filling enough to stand alone as a meal, but you could also serve it as a side dish. It has a very nice fall-winter-holiday feel that goes great with all this rain we've been getting.

Notes/Variations:
Not enough sweet potatoes? Today I used one smallish regular potato as well, and it worked out ok but I had to add more brown sugar to get the flavor balance right since regular potatoes...well they aren't sweet. Shocking, huh?
No blender? (Or don't feel like getting it out?) No problem. You can also serve it as a chunky type soup, and it will still taste great. On the chunky version I would nix the milk. Kristen's version had no milk, but did include brown rice. I didn't have brown rice on hand but this sounds really yummy too, I'll have to try it out next time.
Vegetarian version: just substitute veggie broth for the chicken broth.
Don't have all day? You can also do this on the stove; it should take about 40-60 minutes with only light babysitting (I've hopped in the shower while cooking my sweet potatoes and they were fine, but don't leave the house lest you burn it down!).  But you know me: why would I want to babysit my food when I have a crock-pot to do that for me?

-Joy