Carrots in soup

[viques]

I am prepared to admit that I cut them a bit chunky because I like a bit of chunk in my vegetable soup, (maybe I ought to go Italian and cut them into tiny cubes) but why is it that carrots in soup are always the last thing to be cooked ?

The soup has been simmering for about 40 minutes, it smells lovely, I am dying for a bowl of it for a late lunch all the other vegetables - onion, potato, courgette, leek , tomato and celery, have gone nicely soupy - but the carrots are still obstinantly crunchy.

How does that happen for goodness sake, if they were being cooked in a saucepan on their own they would have turned to mush by now, but in soup they seems to have the ability to withstand heat like some virgin martyr up against the fire of the Spanish Inquisition.

No idea, but your final simile made me laugh, so I didn't want to read and ignore!

What Remus said

Sauté them for ten minutes before adding the liquid

They take ages otherwise

@Susannahmoody

Sauté them for ten minutes before adding the liquid

They take ages otherwise

I did.

Can't you just run the whole lot through a liquidiser?

Its the tomatoes. Any acid in the soup and they take forever to soften. Put the tomatoes in last.

We made soup for lunch today , and cheated by putting the raw peeled and chunked veg in the ( fake ) magimix and chopped them finely , before sautéing and simmering ( and blitzing again as we like smooth soup, )
Maybe the carrots climbed out of the pot when you weren't looking ?
Then jumped back in ( laughing and thinking this will confuse her ! )

msbevvy but that would lose the chunk, I like the chunk.

allthe littleangels is that proper science or are you making it up.very impressed f it is proper science, we never learned that either in science or cookery. Though I can do feather icing......

I am ignoring doilooklikeatourist because that is borderline goady. I have already said I am desperate for a bowl of soup, getting a bit tetchy and hangry now.

Boil them in the stock for a bit before you saute so they go in part cooked.

Don't know if it's "proper science" or not, but it's something I have observed. I tend to bung lemon juice in a lot of things, and found that if I added it before veg softened, the veg stayed crunchy, no matter how long I cooked it.