My friend Brigitte made butternut squash soup for us when we were on a girl’s trip on Lake Huron in Michigan. The cool temperatures at night on Lake Huron and the abundance of fall vegetables made this the perfect choice for an ending to a beautiful day in the “thumb” of Michigan. I have another interpretation of butternut squash soup on my website. That version offers a different perspective with coconut milk, apples, ginger, and honey combined with the butternut squash.
This version combines root vegetables and other squashes using butternut squash as a base.
I cheated, or you could say I took a shortcut, and purchased bags of already cut and cubed butternut squash from Trader Joe’s. Many supermarkets sell peeled and cubed squash although it is more expensive than buying the whole squash and peeling and seeding it yourself.
I added carrots, parsnips, and yellow squash because I had several from my local farmers’ market. It’s hard to go wrong with any combination of root vegetables and squash that you choose.
Make a mirepoix, onions, carrots, and celery, and sauté in a little olive oil. The process for this soup is similar to my other butternut squash and other vegetable soups. After the seasonings are sautéed, the chopped vegetables are added to the pot and cooked briefly. You can either add vegetable stock if you want the soup to be vegetarian or chicken stock for added flavor.
The squash and the seasonings are cooked until soft. You can either use an immersion blender or a food processor to puree the soup until it is smooth. After you return the soup to the pot you may choose to add a little heavy cream to enrich the soup or allow your guests to stir sour cream or plain Greek yogurt into the soup.
Now the fun part, the garnishes. Rather than cooking apples in the soup, use the cubed apples as a garnish. A few pieces of crispy fried bacon, crumbled and a dollop of sour cream can be added. There you have it, butternut squash and root vegetable soup, part two.
Comments are closed.