Beetroot Soup

While the rest of the world enjoys their first few moments with dearest Spring, we on the other side of the world are prepped for Autumn. There are only a few ways for beat the chills and one of my favourite involves the use of my taste buds. Food! Did you know that the process of eating is one of the very few activities where we use all our five senses? Tasting, feeling, seeing, smelling and I guess even hearing. Anyway, what better food for the chills than a huge bowl of warm soup?

My mum often uses beetroots in her smoothies but today I decided to make a beetroot base soup with carrot and ginger.

Ginger goes well with a lot of roots, especially when making raw soups in our Vitamix  blender so I decided to see how it went with beetroot. And I was right! The soup tasted surprisingly amazing! My friend also told me to try adding the zest of some oranges and it did just the trick.

Beetroot soup (raw blend Vitamix)
for more raw blend vitamix recipes visit:  http://www.rawblend.com.au/explore-recipes.html

Ingredients:
2 whole beetroots
2 carrots
2 small tomatoes
1/4 capsicum
2 spring onion stalks (onion for the normal method)
half a garlic
1 tablespoon pepper
1 tablespoon salt
1 table spoon apple cider vinegar
half a green apple
1 table spoon ginger
juice of one lemon
1 teaspoon orange zest
3 cups water or vegetable stock

Normal Method

1. roughly chop beetroot, carrots, tomato and capsicum and place in a pot with salt and water or vegetable stock and bring to boil
2. Meanwhile, chop the onion, garlic and ginger
3. on low heat add a table spoon of vegetable or coconut oil and add the onion. 
4. Temper the onion for about 5 minutes then add the garlic, ginger, and orange zest and cook, stirring now and then to prevent the ingredients sticking to the pan and burning, until onions are soft.
5. add the boiled veggies and the stock and the apple cider vinegar and simmer for around 10 minutes or until the vegetable are just soft enough to process through your blender.
6. turn the stove off and let it cool, then transfer to a blender and puree with the apples in batches until mixture is smooth. 

Vitamix method

1. roughly chop the beetroot, carrots, tomato and capsicum and put it into the blender along with the spring onion, garlic, pepper, salt, ginger, orange zest, apple cider vinegar and vegetable stock or water.
2. Turn the Vitamix on and starting from the lowest number turn the dial slowly all the way to the maximum set and then switch the second switch to "high". 
3. leave the blender on for around 2 minutes and then add the apple and lemon. 
4. Blend for a further minute or until steam starts escaping from the jug. 
5. Turn the blender off and serve with a dollop of Greek yogurt.