Will it Blend?: Fresh Asparagus Soup

You may have noticed that nearly all the food I've posted about is orange or red. We noticed that too and figured it was probably time for a green soup. This one is super good and fresh tasting. I think we'll be making it again really soon.

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It's asparagus season here in San Diego and when I saw these bunches in our supermarket I couldn't pass them up (especially since they were just $0.99 a pound!) A friend sent me this recipe and the following is my variation on it. We made it both the way in the original recipe and the way documented below. We found that the soup with just asparagus (no peas) tasted fresher and brighter so that's the variation I included here. Let's get started. :)

Ingredients:

1 bunch - asparagus

1 - onion

2 Tbsp - olive oil

32 oz. - chicken stock

1/2 cup - cream

salt and pepper to taste

1/2 cup - parmesan (optional) more for garnish

The last time Nathan and I cooked asparagus (back in the chewing days) we ran into trouble because we forgot to cut the tough woody part off at the bottom. This led to some difficult chewing situations, and I'm pretty sure it would also be a problem in the blender. We mentioned this to our friend who shared this wonderful asparagus tip with us. Basically to find out how much of the asparagus stalk is woody you hold it between your hands and let it break wherever is natural natural. Because the tender part is springy it will always break at the boundary between the tough and tender part. Genius! We made a video that explains how to do it, check it out below.

Ok, now that you've removed the tough parts, chop up your asparagus into 1 inch lengths.

Chop and saute the onion in the soup pot. Once the onions soften up add in the chopped asparagus.

Add the seasoning and the stock and let simmer until the asparagus is tender.

Unfortunately it looses some of it's pretty green color, but we really need to cook it long enough so that it will blend and go through sieve nicely. And don't worry, it still tastes fresh and springy even though it's not bright green.

ok, looking pretty tender now.