Last October I canned some carrots. And not just plain carrots… I used a recipe from a Ball Canning book, for Curried Carrots. It sounded fancy, and I’m fancy, so I had to try it. So, I canned the carrots and neatly lined them up in rows on my pantry shelves. Then promptly forgot about them.
I finally opened a jar just the other night, when I had very little time after doing evening farm chores. My thought was, I’ll just heat the carrots up and then add whatever leftovers alongside that I could scavenge from the fridge, and call it “dinner.”
However, I was totally surprised when I opened the jar, at just how flavorful the seasonings were and the broth that was created during the canning process.
This changed my mind, and I decided to pull out the immersion blender and just turn it into a bowl of soup and call it a day, and mostly because I really couldn’t find anything “leftover” worthy to go with it. Cold, stale pizza rolls didn’t really seem like the proper side dish.
This was a good move – I wasn’t disappointed. I added a little sugar to sweeten it, and thought about adding a splash of cream, then decided it really didn’t even need the cream. The smell and taste variations from the curry spices transformed the carrots into something pretty amazing. It tasted fancy. It looked fancy. If you’re wondering, I used Penzey’s curry spice. Some curry’s are better than others. Penzey’s doesn’t disappoint.
When your’re having one of those “I’m really tired and indecisive” kind of days, like when you get off work, come home, do chores, feed all the animals, and then basically have no gray-matter left in your head to think about feeding yourself or even remembering your own name, well, this soup works. No gray-matter required.
This recipe was seriously one of the easiest canning recipes I’ve tried yet, that resulted in a nice “convenience” food staple for the pantry. Simple, and about as cheap as dirt, especially if you use carrots from your own garden. I’m already spinning other ideas in my head on how to use these canned curried carrots in future recipes.
Now go dig out your pressure-canner and get that pantry stocked! ~A
