Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

This Roasted Butternut Squash Soup is a classic that never gets old. Warm, comforting, and super quick to make, this soup is the perfect Winter weeknight dinner and will become a staple in your life.

I don’t know about you, but once the temperature starts dropping, it’s soup season for me! I just find soup to be the most comforting thing, especially when it’s dark and cold outside. I love taking big spoonfuls of it when it’s still piping hot (even though I know that will burn my tongue or the roof of my mouth) and then, when I am almost done and the bit left on my plate is starting to go cold, dipping my bread in and scrape it all up. The dream.

I just never ever get bored of soup. You can mix it and change it according to what vegetables you have at home. In fact, it’s a perfect zero-waste option for when you bought too many vegetables and they are starting to look a bit wrinkly and sad. You just throw them in a pot with some veggie stock and BAM, they are reborn! It’s just an amazing dish, really.

Sometimes, I feel very ambitious with my soups, and I start experimenting with different flavours and spices. Hence my work of genius: my Moroccan-Inspired Sweet Potato and Roasted Red Pepper Soup. But other times, I frankly can’t be bothered to be creative and want to fall back on a foolproof, family favourite, that needs minimal ingredients and will yet make me feel all warm and fuzzy inside. So it’s on those type of night (which in fairness we all have) that this Butternut Squash Soup comes into place.

I remember first making this soup with a dear friend of mine in Germany, when my budget was ridiculously tight and my kitchen completely unequipped for anything ambitious. We had borrowed an immersion blender from a friend and we had felt so proud of ourselves after whipping up this delicious soup to get us through a cold German night. It was the first proper meal we had made during our year abroad and everything in our lives was starting to feel finally a bit more settled. So this soup for me is not just comforting in terms of taste and texture, but also in terms of the memory attached to making it – which is the case SO many times when cooking!

About this Roasted Butternut Squash Soup:

This recipe doesnt’ call for many ingredients, so you need to make everything work for you to their optimal level. I would recommend really sweating you onion and get it nice and caramelised, so that it can really add to the sweetness of the butternut squash. Another thing is, of course, roasting the butternut squash (or pumpkin, if you prefer it). Adding it to the pot raw still works, but the intense flavour brought by the baking process is just incomparable. Try it and you will thank me for it later!

In terms of spices, we are not really overdoing it. We are going to use some cinnamon and paprika, as well as some very important bay leaves and black pepper. Oh and we are definitely gonna roast some garlic with it, because roasted garlic makes everything taste better. Paprika and cinnamon might sound weird when used together, but they do really work. Again, you will not regret this, I promise!

And then of course, you’ll need some warm, crusty bread to scoop this beauty up!

Ingredients:

Serves 2

1 large brown onion

1 medium butternut squash

1 veggie stock cube

2 garlic cloves

3 bay leaves

½ tsp ground cinnamon

½ tsp paprika

¼ tsp freshly black pepper

Salt to taste

Extra virgin olive oil

Instructions:

1. Preheat the oven to 200°C.

2. Peel and chop your butternut squash (or pumpkin) into bite-sized chunks. Add them to a baking tray lined with parchment paper along with the garlic cloves (still in their peel), bay leaves, cinnamon, paprika, pepper, salt and oil. Bake for about 35 minutes.

3. Chop the onion quite finely and add it to a pot. Add some oil and start frying the onion. Continue cooking it for about 10-12 minutes, adding water as needed and slightly caramelising it.

4. Once the butternut has baked, add it to the pot along with the bay leaves. Peel the garlic and add that to the pot as well.

5. Break a veggie stock cube into crumbs and add it to the pot along with enough water to just cover the butternut squash. Stir once more and bring to a boil. Once the water is boiling, lower the heat, cover and let it simmer for about 15 minutes.

6. With an immersion blender, blend everything together. If you want your soup to be less thick, just add some water after blending. If you don’t have an immersion blender and are going to use a jug blender, let the soup cool down before blending.

7. Taste and add salt and/or black pepper if needed. Serve with some nice crusty bread on side or some crunchy croutons.

This soup can be kept in the fridge for up to 4 days and in the freezer for up to 3 months.

Enjoy!