Butternut squash and pumpkin soup
- Preparation 45 min
- Cooking 1 h
- Servings 6 to 8
- Freezing Absolutely
Ads
🎃 The soup that came out of way too much squash
I drove up to the Centre d’interprétation de la courge in the Laurentians one fall and came back with a trunk full of squash. Far more than one household eats. So the butternut and the pumpkin ended up in the same pot with whatever root vegetables were in the drawer, and that accident is still the soup I make every October.
🔥 Twelve minutes in the pot beats an hour in the oven
Most butternut squash soup recipes give the vegetables two minutes in the fat and move on. Two minutes gets you nothing. Here you stand there for 10 to 12 minutes until the edges of the cubes actually brown, then you hit the pot with dry white wine and scrape. Everything that stuck to the bottom is the whole point of the recipe.
Roasting the squash gets you to a similar place. It also gets you a sheet pan to wash and the browned bits left behind on it. If you would rather go that route anyway, I have a roasted butternut squash soup written for it.
🥕 Seven vegetables, and the sweet potato is the one doing the quiet work
Pumpkin, butternut squash, Russet potatoes, turnip, sweet potato, red onion, fresh ginger. Nothing exotic. But a butternut squash and sweet potato soup tastes rounder than a single-squash one, and the turnip is what keeps it from tipping into dessert. The potatoes handle the body, which is why there is no cream anywhere in this. Curry powder, cumin and turmeric round it off without turning it into a curry. If squash season has you cooking, my spaghetti squash gratin is the other one I keep going back to.
Ads
Ads
🎃 Buy the pumpkin in season, freeze it in cubes
Pumpkin is a genuinely good squash that almost nobody cooks, because everyone files it under decoration. When the bins show up in September I buy sugar pumpkins, cut the flesh into cubes and freeze it in bags. The cubes go straight from the freezer into the hot pot, no thawing, and that is what makes this soup possible in January.
🔄 Any squash works, keep the volume
Butternut alone is fine. Buttercup, acorn, honeynut, whatever is sitting on the counter. The recipe was born from leftovers, so it would be strange to be precious about it now. Around 6 cups (1.5 L) of flesh total is the only number that matters.
🔥 Where the flavour actually gets built
Ten to twelve minutes over medium heat, stirring, until the cubes take colour. Add a little more oil if the pot goes dry. Then the wine, then the scraping. That is the whole technique.
🍷 Use a white wine you would drink
Dry, and good enough to pour in a glass. No cooking wine. Beer deglazes beautifully too and leaves a malty note behind. No alcohol in the house? A splash of chicken broth does it. The liquid is a vehicle. The scraping is the job.
🫙 Immersion blender is easy, standing blender is better
The immersion blender works right in the pot and I use it on a weeknight. But if you want that soup to be genuinely silky, the standing blender wins, no contest. Work in small batches and leave the steam a way out, or you will be washing squash off the ceiling.
🌶️ Half a teaspoon each, and that is deliberate
Cumin, curry powder, turmeric, ½ tsp (2 ml) of each. That ratio took me years to land on. It gives the soup its colour and a low hum of warmth, and it stops well short of tasting like curry. If you want the spices louder, go to ¾ tsp (4 ml) each and leave it there.
🥛 The texture comes from the potatoes
There is no dairy in this. The velvet is the Russets breaking down. A drizzle of cream in the bowl at the table is nobody’s business but yours, and coconut milk plays well with the turmeric. Homemade croutons and toasted pumpkin seeds are the garnish I actually make.
🧊 It freezes without losing anything
Most puréed soups come back from the freezer slightly grainy. This one does not, and I have never worked out why. Three to four days in the fridge in a sealed container, months in the freezer.
✅ What to serve with butternut squash and pumpkin soup
A small bowl in front of a roast is one thing. The way it gets eaten here is as the whole supper: good bread, a wedge of cheese, dry sausage, done. If you are stocking a fall soup rotation, my sweet potato and beer soup and my garlic and ginger soup are the other two on rotation, and the best cream of mushroom soup covers the nights you want dairy.
Ads
Ingredients
- ¼ cup (60 ml) olive oil
- 1 red onion, chopped
- 4 cups (1 L) pumpkin flesh, cut into cubes
- The flesh of ½ butternut squash, cut into cubes
- 2 medium Russet potatoes, peeled and diced
- 1 turnip, peeled and diced
- 1 sweet potato, peeled and diced
- 2 tbsp (30 ml) freshly grated ginger
- ½ tsp (2 ml) cumin
- ½ tsp (2 ml) curry powder
- ½ tsp (2 ml) turmeric
- ¼ cup (60 ml) dry white wine
- 4 to 5 cups (1 to 1.25 L) chicken or vegetable broth
Ads
Preparation
- In a large pot over medium heat, pour in ¼ cup (60 ml) olive oil and add the onion. Cook 2 minutes, stirring.
- Add the remaining vegetables, the ginger and the spices, then season generously with salt and pepper. Stir and cook 10 to 12 minutes, stirring, to caramelize the vegetables. Add more oil as needed.
- Add the white wine and scrape the bottom of the pot well to lift all the flavour. Cover with broth, then stir.
- Bring to a boil, reduce to low heat and cover. Simmer 45 minutes, or until the vegetables are extremely tender. Purée, taste and adjust the seasoning if needed.
Browning. Almost every recipe softens the vegetables for two minutes and then drowns them in broth, and the result tastes like boiled squash because that is what it is. Give the cubes 10 to 12 minutes over medium heat until the edges colour, deglaze with dry white wine and scrape the bottom of the pot hard. That fond is the difference between a flat soup and one people ask about.
Cumin, curry powder and turmeric, ½ tsp (2 ml) of each, plus 2 tbsp (30 ml) of freshly grated ginger. The turmeric is mostly there for colour, the cumin for the earthy bottom note, the curry powder to tie them together. It reads as warm rather than as a curry. Push all three to ¾ tsp (4 ml) if you like spice forward, but past that the squash disappears.
Butternut is the reliable one: dense, sweet and it purées smooth. Pumpkin is the underrated one, as long as you use a sugar or pie pumpkin and not a carving pumpkin, which is watery and bland. Buttercup, acorn and honeynut all work. Mixing two or three is genuinely better than any single squash, which is how this recipe came about in the first place.
Yes, and this one comes back exactly as it went in, which is not true of every puréed soup. Cool it, portion it into sealed containers leaving headroom, and it keeps for months. Reheat gently and stir. In the fridge it holds 3 to 4 days. Freezing the raw pumpkin in cubes is worth doing too, so you can make the soup long after the bins are gone.
As a starter, a small bowl with homemade croutons and toasted pumpkin seeds. As a meal, good bread, a piece of cheese and dry sausage, and you do not need anything else on the table. Grilled cheese is the obvious pairing and it earns it. If you want more fall soups, there is my sweet potato and beer soup and my garlic and ginger soup.
Ads
Ads
Ads
Ads
Ads