Butternut Squash Soup

Butternut Soup
Serves 8

Ingredients:
2 medium Butternut Squash, diced
1 Granny Smith Apple, peeled, cored and chopped
2 medium Onions, chopped
4 Tbs. Butter or Margarine
1 1/2 tsp. medium Curry Powder
4 Tbs. Cake Flour
Pinch of ground Nutmeg
2 cubes Chicken Stock
750ml boiling Water (3 cups)
500ml Milk (2 cups)
1 1/2 tsp. Salt
Heavy Cream, optional garnish

Melt the butter or margarine in a soup pot over medium heat. Sauté the onions in the melted butter or margarine for 3 to 5 minutes. Add the curry powder, butternut squash, and chopped apple. Sauté lightly for another 3 to 5 minutes.

Add the flour and nutmeg and increase the heat a bit to quickly stir fry the ingredients.

Meanwhile, dissolve the cubes of chicken stock in the boiling water. Add stock, milk and salt to butternut sauté mixture.

Boil with lid closed on moderate heat till the butternut is soft. Stir and check occasionally. When soft, puree or blend till smooth and creamy. Serve Hot.

Optional extra is to add some cream to the finished soup, just a swirl in the middle of each bowl served.

This is a soup I made recently from butternut squash, which doesn’t usually lend itself to much sublety, but cooked in this way, it was surprisingly good. I used small squash with pale, yellow-orange flesh rather than the bright orange variety, and the finished soup was a lustrous gold, not too sweet, very savoury, but delicate.

Cut a butternut squash in half lengthwise and then cut each half into two inch half-circles. Remove the skin and seeds with a paring knife. Cut one quarter of the squash into half-inch square pieces and set these aside. Place the remaining larger pieces on an oiled baking tray. Peel and cut a large white onion in half and add this to the tray, along with some celery stalks. Roast until the squash is thoroughly cooked (takes half an hour or so).

Blend the cooked ingredients with heated water (cover the top of the blender with a folded cloth just in case the steam pushes the lid off the blender and burns your hand). Place a mesh colander on top of a soup pot and pour the blended mixture into it, using a Rubbermaid spatula to push it through.

Thin to a desired consistency by adding water or a light-coloured vegetable stock. Bring to a boil and then lower the temperature to medium-high. Add the uncooked cubed butternut squash and allow it to cook for 15 minutes or so.

To season, add butter, salt, and a little lemon juice (very important to balance the sweetness of the squash), white pepper, and a little buttermilk for a bit of tang. But don’t boil the soup once you’ve added the buttermilk or it may separate.

Sprinkle with a generous amount of black pepper before serving.

Note: I made a similar soup after a few weeks after making this one, with vivid orange butternut squash and added white kidney beans, Romano beans, and some other seasonings (cumin, garlic, ancho chilli powder). Both of these soups were made for a large group of people and received rave reviews.

I invented this soup sort of on the fly, Mom was out and I needed to whip up a presentable dinner. The only vegetables we had were some potatoes, vivid orange butternuts and loads of onions. It looks sort of similar to Jinmyo's recipe, same basic ingredients, I guess, only it may take less time to make and probably has less subtlety. You'd only need one saucepan or pot the whole way through, and it takes about 30 minutes from beginning to end.

• Follow Jinmyo's directions for cutting the squash. (Any way you cut it is fine, actually.)
• Peel and dice a large white onion. Saute in olive oil until glassy.
• Throw in diced butternut, (Potatoes too, if you want, but that's optional). Salt lightly. Leave uncovered on low flame, stirring occasionally until the squash browns on the edges.
• Add some water. Not much, you don't want the veggie to float, only rest barely submerged.
• Cover pot, let it simmer until the butternut is cooked through.
• Blend the soup. I use a handblender, it eliminates extra dishes etc.
• Add salt if needed, doubtful.
  Throw in some black pepper.

Granted, this isn't very scientific recipe, but it works, and it's relatively quick, and I think it's YUMMY..

Butternut soup is a simple vegetarian dish that you don't need expert cooking skills or lots of kitchen kit in order to make, and so it is great bachelor food ¹: three or more meals worth of food cooked in one large pot; or if you have people over, one meal for three or more people. It uses cheap ingredients, and is not unhealthy either. It can also scale up, provided that you have a large enough pot.

My version of butternut soup is simple to make and tastes great, due in no small part to butternuts being excellent vegetables.

You will need the following ingredients:

• One medium to large butternut
• Two medium sized sweet potatoes (i.e. almost as much flesh as the butternut)
• An onion or two
• Salt and pepper
• Optional herbs, spices, vegetable stock, garlic, chili peppers or chili powder, etc.
• Optional bread, cheese or soft white creamy goat cheese
• Optional garnishings such as parsley, basil, spring onions

You will need the following ingredients:

• A big pot, preferably with a lid. (and a stove, silly!)
• a sharp knife and surface to chop stuff upon
• a potato masher (or hand blender if you want to get fancy)

First cut up the butternut into chunks; removing the skin, seeds and soft and stringy bits that go with the seeds. The exact size of the chunks is not important at all, but I aim for smaller than fist sized to make it cook quickly. Wash and cut up the sweet potatoes (removing the skin is not necessary, but cut out the grey bits). Peel and chop up the onions. Throw all of this in the big pot, put in water until it is three-quarters covered, and boil the living daylights out of it.

During this time you can add salt, pepper, chilli, garlic, vegatable stock and other herbs to hand if you want to. Spicing is something that I usually do on the fly with whatever spices I can pull out of the cupboard, and a lot of taste-testing. But there are two main paths to the spicing: the herby route of sage and garlic, and the hot route of chilli and pepper. I normally take the hot route because it's easier and I like it. Note that some things like salt and pepper are robust enough to add initially, but some more delicate ingredients should be added later.

After half an hour or so it will all be getting soft, but what you want is soup not mushy vegetables, so mash it with the potato masher, and boil it some more. If I have white wine open, I would add a half or whole glass at this stage.

Another ten minutes should give you lovely orange goop. At this stage watch out for it getting too thick, and sticking and burning at the bottom. Add water if this is an issue. Put on the lid to prevent the thick boiling goop from spattering your kitchen. It is basically soup, but it is thick enough to trot a mouse so you could call it stew if you like.

Serve once it has cooled to an edible temperature (careful! thick soup is excellent at retaining heat; and a burned mouth is no fun). If you have bread, serve that alongside for dipping. If you want to get fancy, drop a bit of goats cheese and/or other garnishings in the middle of each portion.

Variations

princess loulou's variation is to peel the sweet potatoes, to add lots of fresh ginger at the start (very warming), and lots of ground coriander at the end.

wertperch says: "Must try it with sweet potato, I normally use carrots".

 

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1) My theory of bachelor cooking is simple: if you only use one pot or pan, it not really cooking, just fixing yourself some food. Two pots, like the main dish in one and a sauce in a second one: that's cuisine buddy, why do you need to make that just for yourself? Go with a date to a restaurant instead.

I love Winter Squash. When I was a toddler, I suffered from beta-carotene poisoning from being fed too much strained squash. Apparently, it was one of the only things that I would eat. I am older and less picky now, but I still love the sweet orange flesh of winter squash. Hubbard, fairy, turban, butternut, buttercup, these are all cultivars of the species “cucurbita-maxima," and they are delicious when roasted or made into soup.

This year, I bought a few Buttercup plants for my garden and planted them in late spring after the last frosts. By September, the vines were approaching 20 feet long with big orange blossoms and apple sized dark-green fruits growing. They also were attracting cucumber beetles and squash bugs, which is another story entirely. By the time the first frost of Fall had killed the vines, I yielded about 10 pounds of fruit.

After the harvests, what better way is there to celebrate than to share my bounty with family and friends? My winter squash takes center stage this year as a simple bisque that lets the sweet flavor of the squash really shine. This requires a conventional blender, a big stock pot, two large Pyrex bowls, and not much else.

VERY SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

Two tablespoons of butter or olive oil

Two stalks of celery

One head of garlic

One large sweet yellow onion

Sea salt

Three to four large winter squashes, about 5 pounds.

I begin by halving the squash with a sharp, heavy chef’s knife or a vegetable cleaver. Take care, these fruits are dense and difficult to cut! With an ice cream scoop, I scrape out the seeds and stringy bits, but DO NOT THROW THEM AWAY! The squash guts are packed with flavor and we are going to make stock with them.

Now, the squash flesh can be cooked in one of two ways. If you have a large enough steaming basket, the squash can be cubed and steamed in the stock pot that you will be making your stock in. Otherwise, you can lightly oil the insides of the squash halves and roast the squash in a 350 degree oven for about 20 minutes or until tender. The former method has the benefit of infusing the squash flesh with the flavor of the stock but, I prefer the latter method as the squash sugars get caramelized a bit when roasted.

On the cutting board, I chop up the onions, celery and garlic. Under medium heat, I add my oil or butter to the stock pot and when hot, I add the onions, celery, garlic, a bit of sea salt and the squash guts. I stir the contents frequently, making sure that nothing is burning on the bottom of the pot. The onions and celery are translucent and the steam coming off smells delicious but I keep on stirring because I really want to unlock the flavors of the squash seeds. If it begins to burn, I add a little bit of water.

Finally, I am satisfied that everything is a cooked down into an orangy, stringy, seedy gack. I add three cups of boiling water to the pot. I taste it at this point and add a bit more sea salt. This is all the stock that I need for the soup. I have effectively made a Mirepoix, substituting carrots with the squash guts.

If I am steaming the squash, I would want to keep the stock at a low boil and begin to steam the squash cubes in a covered steamer basket on top of the pot. This should take about fifteen to twenty minutes to stem the flesh until it is fork tender.

If I am roasting my squash, I will simmer the stock while I wait for the squash to cook through in the oven. Once the roasted squash halves are cooked, I scrape the flesh from the skin into a large Pyrex bowl.

I place a large colander over my second large Pyrex bowl. Into the colander I pour the contents of the stock pot, stirring the colander to let the liquids drain into the bowl. When I have reclaimed all of the liquids I can now discard the solids. They have imparted all their flavors into the stock and can now retire to the compost pile.

I begin to put my cooked squash into the blender, filling it only about halfway. If I fill it up past halfway, I risk making a mess and scalding myself. Carefully, I pour just enough of the stock into the blender to cover the squash. With the lid ON the blender , I blend the contents until it is nice and smooth. If the contents do not blend right away, I add a bit more stock. Returning the blended bisque into the stock pot, I then repeat the blending until I have make all my bisque.

Voila! I add sea salt to taste. I warm up some crusty bread in the oven, while my bisque is warming on "low". I serve the soup with the crusty bread and butter and some spiced apple cider. Just the thing to warm up cold bones alone or with family and friends on a cold winter's evening.