East-meets-West Creamy Taro Root Soup

Being a little adventurous in cooking sometimes brings a lot of beautiful surprises in results. In this post, I try to bring an Asian flavour and a Western way of cooking together to create a super healthy soup which I name it the “East-meets-West Creamy Taro Root Soup”.

The taro plant is a tropical plant with large green leaves. Its root is starchy and high in fiber, packs tons of essential minerals, like potassium and magnesium, and nearly three times the dietary fiber of a potato. It is believed to be native to Southeast Asia but it is cultivated and used in many places all around the world. Fascinatingly, it seems as though every culture uses taro in a slightly different way. Now a day, we see taro root is used as ingredient in many hot and cold sweet and savoury dishes, in baked goods like cakes, sweets like bubble tea and ice cream, pudding, as a snack like chips and fried taro sticks, savoury like soups and braised dishes, curry….

Even if you are not very familiar with this rich source of nutrition root vegetable or even if you are not a taro lover, this East-meets-West Creamy Taro Root Soup recipe may change your mind as it’s all well worth the effort.

Serve 4 peoples

Preparing time: 05 minutes                         Cooking time: 15 minutes                         Total time: 20 minutes

INGREDIENTS:

• 350 g taro root, chopped in small chunks
• 1 small potato, chopped in small chunks
• 1 small or 1/2 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 table spoon olive / vegetable oil
• 2 tea spoons salt
• ground black pepper

For topping:

• 1 table spoon unsalted butter, melted
• 2 tea spoons dried mint leaves
• 1/2 tea spoon paprika flakes

METHODS:

1. Add 800 ml water, taro root and potato in a sauce pan and bring to the boil over high heat. At the same time, in a another small sauce pan, heat up the oil and fry the onion for 2 minutes over medium heat then add the onion in the soup sauce pan.
2. Reduce the heat to medium and cook the soup for 10 minutes until the taro root and potato is really soft.
3. Remove the soup from the stove and use a hand blender to blend the soup until you get a puree texture, season with grounded black pepper, add extra salt if needed.
4. To make the topping sauce: melt butter in a hot sauce pan and quickly add dried mint leave and paprika flake in and stir for not more then 10 seconds (overcooking will burn the dried mint and paprika flakes)
5. Divide the soup in individual soup bowls and top with the topping sauce by using a tea spoon