Roast Butternut and Onion Soup

My sister jogged by for a visit today. Literally jogged -- she lives about a mile away with her husband (you'll be seeing more of them; or more specifically their cooking, because they have a grill and a flair for fancy meat-based dishes, both areas where I am lacking.... oh, and they're both employed, and have promised to feed me occasionally). Anyway, last time she dropped by, I was similarly still employed, and so played hostess as she rampaged through my cabinets. As I recall, she ate half my lunch, drank a big mug of cocoa, and then made off with half a dozen freshly-baked brownies in under an hour. Amazing.

But things have changed. Now I am unemployed and have time on my hands, so when she drops by it's not so much an opportunity for her to pillage my freezer; instead, it's a chance to test out new recipes on an unwitting volunteer. Bwa ha!


First, introducing the main players: my new beloved, the butternut squash, and an old standby, the onion. Other things you'll need for this dish are olive oil, dried rosemary, salt, pepper, and chicken stock. I'm not fussy about the chicken stock, be it liquid or homemade or cubed or in a packet, and I often leave it out of soups that already have meat in them. But in this case, we're using it.

I'm also bringing in spices for this one, though I'm guessing you could mix the spices up with another set and come out with a totally different flavour. I'm using whole cumin seeds, ginger, and sweet powdered curry.

Fire up the oven at the customary 375 degrees and put your stockpot or soup pot on the stove at a low setting. I've used the top half of the butternut squash for this -- peeled it (with a vegetable peeler, even though the skin feels pretty tough), cubed it and put it in an oven-safe dish that will roughly accomodate a single layer. Drizzle with olive oil, a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, and a teaspoon of rosemary needles. Toss everything and stick it in the oven, and set the timer for 25 minutes.

The pan on the stove should be hot now; take about half a teaspoon of cumin and throw those in, then stir until they're toasted a bit (you can tell when the cuminy fumes start wafting up at you, around the 1-minute mark). Tip the cumin seeds into a cup and stash it somewhere you won't knock it over. Put two tablespoons of olive oil into the heated pan, and keep the heat on low.

Food Network-fu the onion (that thing where you cut it in half, then slice it at angles before chopping it up). Once it's diced into pieces, add the onion to the soup pot, give everything a good stir and then cover the pot. This is where all the "keep the heat on low!" stuff gets serious -- you're going to have to keep coming back and stirring the onions to make sure they don't catch and burn to the bottom. The lid on the pot means that they won't fry, but burning's a problem if the heat's too high.

Turn around to discover that your sister has somehow unearthed a bag of mini marshmallows and is steadily devouring them. Cannily make her tea, and wait until she drinks it before saying "Oh, I should have offered you cocoa instead, to have with the marshmallows!" At this point, your sister will not be able to handle cocoa, knowing she's going to have soup and then have to walk home.

Confiscate marshmallows.

Buzzer! Stir slowly-roasting butternut, then reset the timer for another 10 minutes and put it back in the oven. Now stir the onions again. (Feel free to get paranoid about the onions.)

If you have an electric kettle, this is a great time to fill it up (or refill it, depending on your sister) and get it ready for the soup phase of our operation. If you have a stovetop kettle, same deal. Also, pull out all of those spices you kept safely out of reach: toasted cumin, ginger, curry.

At the second buzzer, check the butternut squash to see if it's golden and lovely. We'll assume that 35 minutes of roasting did the trick and you can turn off the oven (if not, repeat in 10 minute increments until satisfied). Spoon the squash into your lovely unburnt onion-filled soup pot and stir everything together, then pour in enough boiled water to totally cover the vegetables. Add in a packet/cube of chicken stock (thriftier than liquid), stir again and cover; at this point you can turn up the heat a tiny bit, just to make sure that the water keeps boiling well.

I hate to waste a hot oven, and soup alone can be a bit dull unless it's got identifiable bits in it (and this one won't, we're pulverizing it), so I toasted some english muffins and then made mini-pizza-things out of them. At left you see the naked muffins, before I found a few slices of cheddar and spoonfuls of this sundried tomato marinade I use instead of ketchup -- it's incredibly powerful, very nice. Once you've figured out what to put on the muffins, stick everything on a cookie sheet and put them on the top rack of the turned-off oven, and while you finish up the soup they'll just nicely melt together.

The muffin topping search-and-recovery mission hopefully took you about five minutes. Now uncover the pot and make sure nothing's stuck to the bottom (if so, your heat's too high, adjust). Add in a teaspoon of salt, a teaspoon of pepper, a teaspoon of curry, half a teaspoon of ginger, and all of the cumin you toasted. I know these quantities sound miniscule, but most of these recipes are adjusted for a eat one, freeze one plan; if you're married or have a roommate or kids, just assume everything's been made for 2-3 people.


Ironically, at this point I realised that in-pot blending such a small amount in my Le Creuset was probably a recipe for disaster. That's why I tipped everything into a saucepan to continue. And while using my immersion blender, I thought "wow, that certainly creates an odd suction against the bottom of the pot if you hold it the wrong way". And I specifically remember thinking "Hunh, this could get really messy if you're not carefu--- AAAGH!"

Eh, I needed to clean the stovetop anyway.

Once the sister had stopped chortling long enough to set the table, this is what was served. It is VERY filling, especially if you're an idiot and use bowls that are really too big for this job. The sister said that the roasting of the squash was definitely noticeable and appreciated, and I think that's true -- I initially heard of this recipe done with squash just thrown in with the chopped onions, and I suspect that would come out really weak. The onion's not sharp in this at all, but it is present. I was also surprised that a soup with absolutely no dairy in it could come out with the appearance of a cream-based soup! But it was lovely and smoky, and the tomato marinade and cheddar were a nice sharp addition. All in all, not bad for half a squash, an onion, and a spice rack.

...oh, and just in case you don't like onion, you can probably pull this off by using half the onion and just adding a little more squash. I made roast butternut squash soup in much this same fashion last month, and as these two containers show (Twist'n'Loc, my absolute favourite tupperwareish brand ever), you can get quite a different colour of soup by using a different squash-to-onion ratio. And it might also be a good trick to reserve some of the roast squash and stick it back in the soup post-blending, if you're having the soup on its own and want something to get your teeth into.

As with everything, date and freeze the remainder of the meal, preferably in small containers so you can defrost and devour single servings. Ta da!