In the month of December I’m trying to eat more veggie dense meals. After Thanksgiving and eating turkey, mashed potatoes and stuffing leftovers for three days straight, my body has been craving vegetables.
I had never really played around with butternut squash before but it’s so cheap and easy to find in the winter months that I wanted to give it a whirl and test some recipes with the popular cold-weather veggie.
For this soup I threw together a simple vegetable stock or mirepoix as the french would say and went from there. I’m SO pleased with the outcome, this is definitely going to be a go-to for me this season!
Ingredients
- 1 medium butternut squash
- 2 cups diced white onion
- 1 cup diced carrots
- 1 cup diced celery
- 4 cloves of garlic roughly chopped
- 5 to 6 cups of water
- 1 1/2 Tbsp avocado oil (Can use olive oil or preferred oil)
- 1 Tbsp turmeric
- Salt and pepper to taste
Directions
- Preheat oven to 450°
- Cut squash vertically, (hotdog style) and scoop out the seeds.
- Drizzle with 1/2 tablespoon of preferred oil and sea salt and place flesh side down on a baking sheet, I like to line the baking sheet with aluminum foil or parchment paper to make clean up a bit easier.
- Roast in the oven for 45-50 mins, to test, make sure you can easily pierce with a fork.
- While the squash is roasting, prep the veggie stock, or mirepoix as the french would say.
- Dice all of the veggies to be a relatively uniform size so they cook at the same rate.
- Add a tablespoon of oil to a large pot and add the onions, carrots, celery and garlic, sweat them down on medium to low heat until they become tender, stirring often.
- When the veggies are cooked through, add the water, turmeric, salt and pepper.
- Add the top to the pot and let simmer while the squash finishes roasting.
- Once the squash is done, turn over so the flesh side is up and let sit for 10 minutes until it’s cool enough to handle.
- Scoop out the flesh and add to the pot.
- Blend soup until smooth. (I used an immersion blender because it’s less clean up, but if you do not own one, you can transfer to a regular blender, but use caution as it will be HOT!)
- If desired, add more salt and pepper to taste.
*Recipe yields 4 servings*
You can add croutons, herbs, or even toast the squash seeds and put those on top! I added a few spoonfuls of cottage cheese for some extra protein at lunch, but the options are endless!
There’s a reason why this is a winter vegetable… the temps have been dropping in NYC and this soup is the perfect food to warm your body from the inside out. It freezes super well, but this batch I made was so good I don’t think it will last long enough to freeze it. 🙂
If you decide to make this, please tag me on Instagram @thegoodybagg so I can see!
Stay warm!
xo Megan
The Goody Bagg 