By Danielle French

Soup of the Week – Jerusalem artichoke

Jerusalem artichokes

Jerusalem Artichokes or sunchokes make a delicious soup, especially during the cold weather. Oddly, this tuber or root vegetable has no relationship to Jerusalem or to an artichoke. Very strange. It is also known as a sunchoke. You can read more about its interesting history here. I’m grateful (thanks to @mollysacres) to have an abundance this year to cook with.

Jerusalem artichokes are an very old vegetable being a staple of the First Nations of North America’s diet. They have a sweet, unique almost nutty taste. My friend Claire, discovered a huge patch of them beneath her “sunflowers” and closer to home, my friend Joyce was overloaded and sent me a sack full.

Tip from my Mom

This soup isn’t purely a Jerusalem or sunchoke soup – I confess that I am becoming my mother’s daughter and I added the leftover spinach salad with grapes, balsamic vinegar from the previous dinner into the soup. My mother never threw any salad out. She would eat it soggy the next day but more often throw it into the blender to make cold gazpacho in the summer or add to vegetable soup in the winter. I promise you, this soup would be just as good without the leftover salad so I do not insist that you use it as an ingredient but it does add a certain…..something to the taste that Shawn – believe it or not – liked.

Jerusalem Artichoke Soup Recipe

3 tablespoon oil + 1 tablespoon butter
1 leek sliced
1 medium onion peeled and cut into chunks
2 garlic cloves smashed
1 parsnip peeled and chopped
about 1 lb of washed and peeled sunchokes
1 stalk celery chopped
(leftover salad about 1 cup- optional)
2 litres of chicken or vegetable broth
salt/pepper
grated nutmeg

Making it

Heat the oil in a sturdy soup pot and add the chopped leeks. Saute slowly without burning for about 5-1o minutes. Add in the remaining vegetables and broth. Cover slightly and bring to a boil. Simmer for 40 minutes. Cool. Blend with an immersion blender and serve warm with grated nutmeg on top.

This soup is a good hearty dinner soup or for lunch just served with a slice of bread. This is Mickaels Bakery Norwegen seed bread which is one of my favourites.