Quick ‘n’ Easy Butternut Squash Soup
We went grocery shopping today, and as a result of both of us being hungry when we left, we went completely mad with it. We came home with more vegetables than I know what to do with before they go off, one of them being butternut squash. Now, I’ve never bought one before, let alone used it in cooking, so I didn’t quite know what to expect. But never the less, I decided I would give it a go for lunch.
My boyfriend’s dad makes a wonderful butternut squash soup, that doesn’t seem too tricky to make, so I looked up some recipes for guidance and got going. Somewhat to my surprise, a lot of them contained apple, but I thought who am I to decide that’s not tasty, and went and got 2 apples.
I have used plain water and stock cubes for this recipe as I didn’t have any stock at home, and had no intention of making any. I was really hungry! The soup tasted wonderful anyway, so I don’t think it matters too much in this case. One batch of this soup would serve about 5-6 people, unless they are as hungry as I was.
Ingredients
1 medium-sized butternut squash
2 medium-sized red apples
1 leek
A knob of butter
2.5 cups of water
1 cup of white wine
2 stock cubes of you liking (I used one chicken and one vegetable)
1 teaspoon of fennel seeds
1 teaspoon of salt
1/2 teaspoon of ground black pepper
1/3 teaspoon of cayenne pepper (I may have used a little more, but be careful if you’re sensitive to hot spices)
2 table spoons of créme fraiche
Garnish
Step one
Peel, core and cube the apples, rinse and chop the leek roughly. It doesn’t matter what your chunks of veg look like since they’re going in the blender later anyway. Cut the butternut squash in half, lengthwise, and remove all the seeds. This is done quite easily with the help of a table-spoon. To remove the meat of the squash from the peel, you can use two different methods. I chose to just slice it, and then cut the peel off with a sharp knife, making sure to let as little of the meat as possible go to waste. Roughly chop your squash when you’re done. The other method of doing this is to roast the de-seeded halves of the butternut squash in the oven until the meat is soft and can be removed from the peel with a spoon. Both are absolutely fine for this recipe.
Step two
Melt your knob of butter in a large pot, let it melt and start bubbling, then put all of your chopped veg in. Let them saute for about 5 minutes, while stirring to make sure they don’t stick or burn, until they are a bit mushy. Now pour in your water and wine, crumble in your stock cubes, and add all the spices. Bring to a boil and leave to simmer for about 20 minutes.
Step three
The content of the pot should now be soft, and mushy. It’s time for blending! If you have a hand-held mixer you can have a go at the soup while it’s still in the pot, mixing until it has a smooth texture. I don’t have one of these, so I used my blender. You have to be very careful when blending hot things as they tend to splash, even if you have a lid on your blender (which you should!). Blend the soup in batches, only filling the blender jug about halfway each time. Pulse the soup until it’s completely smooth, and pour into a second pot. Repeat until you have blended all of it. When doing this you can pour the blended soup through a sieve, just to make sure there are no bits. I was in a hurry, so I didn’t do this, and ended up with little bits of fennel seed in my soup. Not game-breaking, but a little annoying.
Step four
Let the blended soup simmer for a few minutes, then it’s time to plate up. Add a table-spoon of créme fraiche to each serving, and garnish with something green – perhaps some parsley, or a basil leaf. Eat and enjoy!
The result is a wonderful, smooth, and warming soup with a kick. I think the heat of the cayenne pepper complements the rich smoothness of the butternut squash really well, and the taste is only heightened by the fresh taste of the créme fraiche. I was very pleasantly surprised by this soup, especially since I improvised the recipe, and it was the first time I made it. All in all it was easy, tasty, and didn’t take too much time.
If you try this recipe, please let me know what you think. I know I loved it, and so did Kev.
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