This delicious sweet potato and fuji apple soup is such a perfect winter recipe to start Oakhurst Kitchen. (Also, bacon never hurt anyone…that’s right, isn’t it?)
This post means that we are taking the leap and making this official. Man, it’s really hard to know where to start when you are at the beginning of something so new and exciting. What we do know is that we are passionate about food and photography. We still have a lot to learn and discover, I’m sure. Why not share that journey with you?
So how did this idea to start a food blog enter into our brains? Almost 2 years ago, Josh and I entered a iron chef photography and recipe contest. We knew that we could take a decent picture but we had to come up with a recipe that included the secret ingredient – sweet potatoes.
Making sweet potatoes look and sound delicious seemed like the real challenge. But we’d been making a lot of soups and we were inspired to play around until we had a winning sweet potato soup recipe! We won the contest and found the confidence to start taking our food adventures more seriously.
So we figured this recipe should be our first – a reminder that even though this recipe won us a free dinner at a fancy restaurant, really it gave us so much more – the inspiration to keep taking photos and sharing recipes with you. Here’s the first of many special meals we hope to enjoy together.
- 1 small cauliflower, divided into bite-sized florets
- 4 slices of applewood bacon
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 small yellow onion, sliced
- 2 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 small fuji apple, peeled and sliced
- 2 large sweet potatoes, peeled and sliced
- 1 teaspoon of cinnamon
- 4 cups vegetable broth
- salt and pepper to taste
- Pre-heat oven to 400 degrees. Place the cauliflower florets on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Drizzle with olive oil, then add salt and pepper. Bake for 35-40 minutes, tossing halfway through. When cauliflower is fork tender, remove from the oven and set aside.
- While the cauliflower is roasting, cook the bacon slices in the large soup pot over medium heat. Once the bacon is crispy, remove from the pot and set aside.
- Keep the stove on medium and add the onions to the bacon drippings remaining in the pan. Cook onions until softened and translucent, about 5 minutes.
- Add the garlic and cook for one minute, until fragrant.
- Add sliced apples, sweet potato and cinnamon and cook for 3 minutes more.
- Add the vegetable broth and turn stove up to medium-high. Bring to a boil. Reduce flame to low and simmer, uncovered, until sweet potatoes and apples are softened, about 30 minutes. Remove pan from the heat and let rest for 10 minutes.
- Blend the soup in the pot using an immersion blender. Once soup is blended smooth, serve soup into bowls and garnish with roasted cauliflower florets & crisp bacon crumbles.
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