Squash Soup

Ingredients:

This recipe is extremely flexible, and you can change out basically all the ingredients and it’ll still be great. So the below is just an example, and you should feel free to be creative (e.g. Alya once made it with acorn squash, carrot, and asian pear as the vegetables, and used nutmeg, cinnamon and other thematically sweet spices).

  • 2 large butternut squash
  • 1 head broccoli, coarsely chopped
  • 4 large carrots, coarsely chopped
  • 2 medium onions, coarsely chopped
  • 4-6 cloves garlic
  • 8oz evaporated milk (coconut milk works too)
  • parsley and thyme or other herbs/spices to taste
  • chicken broth concentrate (ideally better than bouillon, but cubes should work fine too).
  • 1/2 tsp. salt plus more to taste (depends how salty your chicken broth concentrate is)

  1. Cut the squash in half, and bake at 400 degrees on cookie sheets until squash is soft, about 40 minutes. Remove the peel and cut the squash into 1 inch cubes.

  2. Boil broccoli, onion, and carrots together in a pot until soft (15-20 minutes). Save the resulting vegetable water to use as the water when making the broth.

  3. Food process all the cooked vegetables as well as the garlic and thyme. Unless your food processor is giant, you’ll need to do 3-4 batches, adding a little broth from step 2 as necessary to make the vegetables liquify properly. Though these days we use our immersion blender instead of the food processor.

  4. Combine the vegetables in a pot over heat. Add the evaporated milk (for creaminess) and as much broth (vegetable water + broth concentrate) as needed to get a nice, thick texture. Add salt to taste if needed.

Serve topped with sliced almonds and Parmesan cheese, We like to eat it with bread, which is quite nice dipped in the soup.

Makes enough for 10 meals or so if eaten as the main food, though this is based on a hazy recollection so it could be a bit off.

Ideas to try next time (from Fresh Tastes post):

  • Slice the squash thinly before roasting for extra-roasty flavor.
  • Use tahini instead of evaporated milk or other milky substance.