Tasty, Easy, Wonderful: SOUP

This soup is deliciously thick and creamy. It can easily be a meal on its own. It is delightfully cream free, and healthy as can be.

I’m just going to start out by saying that this recipe is less “recipe” more “guideline”. You can easily switch it up to your taste, and add more or less liquid to achieve your desired thickness.

Butternut Squash

1 Medium to large butternut squash (cut in half and remove seeds)
Olive oil
A few stalks celery, diced
A couple of carrots, diced
2 small onions , diced
2 potatoes, cut into small pieces
5 cups water, chicken stock, veggies stock, or some combination (whatever you have on hand or suits your taste)

Season however you like. I usually stick with salt, pepper, cumin, and maybe a little curry powder or cayenne. You can add bay leaves, paprika, nutmeg…whatever you feel like!

Instructions

1. Place squash meat-side up on over rack and roast at 350F for about 20 min.

2. While squash in roasting, cook onion in a bit of olive oil until slightly translucent.

3. Add carrots, celery and potatoes. Add cumin, salt, pepper + other seasonings and cook for a few minutes.

4. Add water/stock and bring to a simmer.

5. When squash is cooked, remove from oven and let cool. Scoop the squash from the skin and add to the soup.

6 . Continue cooking until vegetable are tender.

7. Remove from heat and puree with an emulsion blender, food processor, or blender.

8. Taste and season as needed. If you want to thin out the soup you can add more water/stock. Alternatively, you can add milk or cream. Last time I made this I used buttermilk, because we happened to have some in the fridge that needed to be used, it was delish.

9. If you want to thicken the soup you can just let it cook awhile longer. I recommend doing this anyway because it lets all the flavors mingle and become best friends.

10. Garnish with sour cream, yogurt, parsley, or nothing at all!

Happy Cooking!