Butternut Squash Soup

IT’S AUTUMN AND THAT MEANS SOUP TIME. And this one is amazing! I could easily have it for breakfast, lunch and dinner. I think it tastes extra great because not only is it home made, it’s made by me! *toot toot*

I used to make soup when I worked in the kitchens a few years ago but I haven’t really made any at home. I’d been looking for a good soup recipe for a while (I couldn’t find my one for roasted red pepper!) and I came across one that Kelly Osbourne is said to have been eating when she was in the process of losing all that weight, so I thought why not! A soup that sounds great and is pretty healthy? Ain’t nobody gonna turn that down.

This isn’t going to be a photo heavy post like my other baking posts – I didn’t think you’d want to see a million pictures of me peeling and chopping vegetables! The butternut squash was quite interesting though, it smells exactly like honeydew melon!

1 butternut squash   2 cloves of garlic
2 carrots   1 medium-large onion
1 large potato   4 cups vegetable stock
1 cup coconut milk    oil

How cheap are those ingredients! This recipe makes enough for you to have soup for lunch EVERY DAY for a WEEK! Before we get down to the cooking – make sure you have a pan big enough! It’s going to have to be bigger than a saucepan I’m afraid!

Right, firstly you need to dice your onion into teeny tiny pieces and do the same with your garlic. (I can still smell it on my hands!) Then put them in your pan with a bit of oil and let them cook until translucent.

Whilst thats going on you can be peeling, de-seeding and cubing your vegetables. Bung them in the pan along with your vegetable stock. You can use plain water if you don’t have vegetable stock or don’t want to use it for whatever reason, but it’s obviously way tastier with it! I got these little stock pots (above) from Knorr – I put two in the pan and then 4 cups of water. Bring everything to the boil, then turn the heat down and let it simmer for about 30 minutes. When you come back to it the vegetables should be nice and soft – easily pierced with a fork. It looks a bit like a stew at this point!

Remove the pan from the heat and add in your coconut milk. Now comes the best part! I think so anyway. The easiest way to blend everything together and smush all the vegetables up is to use a stick blender that you can just shove right into the pot, but obviously you can divide everything up and use a standard blender if you want. When it’s all lovely and smooth, have a taste and see if you need any salt and pepper. I never cook with salt and pepper but it does make a difference to soup!

We’re done! I’d like to be able to show you a nice artsy picture of the finished soup with a nice garnish blah blah blah… but I can’t. I just have this…

At least that gives you a rough idea of how much the recipe makes! As you can see we just put everything in tubs and then kept it in the fridge – when I want some I just pour it into my mug and whack it in the microwave for a couple of minutes! YUM!

If you’re still lusting after a fancy picture, have this one I found from the BBC…