Sweet Potato Soup

With all this cold weather, I keep craving warm food. Tonight I wanted soup, and we had two and a half big sweet potatoes left in the fridge. I've never made sweet potato soup before, but it just sounded right!

I started with this recipe from RecipeTips.com and (as always) changed some things up. It took less than an hour and hit the SPOT: temperature-hot, but also a little spicy on top of the other flavors.

Notes:

• This is a blended soup. If you don't have a hand blender, you'll need to transfer batches of the hot soup back and forth from your regular blender. Proceed with caution. And if you like making blended soups, get a hand blender! I love mine.
  
• Adjust the spices as you go. I did the taste-shake of this-taste-pinch of that thing until it seemed right.
• To add some more protein, you could add some plain yogurt or silken tofu at the end.
  
• It would also be great with celery and carrot. I would probably cook those with the onion and garlic in the stock pot before adding broth and sweet potatoes.
  

Spicy-Sweet Sweet Potato Soup
6-8 servings

Ingredients

• 2-3 large sweet potatoes, cut small (tip: I used my vegetable peeler to shave thin slices, then cut the ends with a knife)
• 6 cups broth or water (I used 5 cups vegetable stock and 1 cup water)
  
• 1 medium onion, chopped
  
• 4 cloves garlic, chopped
• olive oil for cooking
• 2 tsp cumin
• 1/4 tsp thyme
• 1/4 tsp cayenne pepper
  
• 1/4 tsp ground cloves
• salt and black pepper to taste

Directions

1. Chop/slice the sweet potatoes and put them in a stock pot with the liquid. Bring to a boil, cover, and simmer, stirring occasionally, while you do the next steps (20 minutes if you're slow like me).
   
2. Chop the onions and garlic. Saute in oil until translucent.
   
3. Add onions, garlic, and spices to sweet potatoes. Stir it up.
   
4. Check sweet potatoes. Once they're soft, blend the soup with a hand blender or (carefully) with your regular blender, adding more liquid if you want it thinner. Taste it and adjust spices as needed.
5. Serve hot on a cold night.