Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

This soup takes a while to make, but very little of that time is actually spent standing over the stove.

Chunks of butternut squash, sweet onion, and elephant garlic are slow roasted in the oven for an hour-and-a-half, then simmered quickly with chicken broth and pureed.

A cup of heavy cream added at the very end guarantees a velvety, satisfying soup.

Serve with hunks of rustic garlic bread. If you wanted to take this completely over the top, add a little cooked crab or lobster meat at the very end.

Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup: A note on ingredients

Part of the appeal of this soup to me is how little prep time it actually requires.

I use pre-cut squash that I get in the produce section of my local grocery store. It costs a wee bit more, but I don’t mind one bit if it means I can avoid wrestling with a whole squash.

If you can’t find it pre-cut, you can certainly peel and chop a whole butternut squash. It will just take a little bit longer.

Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

20 oz. butternut squash, cut up into chunks (that’s about 4 cups)
1 large sweet onion
1 clove elephant garlic
1/4 cup olive oil
kosher salt
freshly cracked black pepper
7 fresh sage leaves, minced
4 cups chicken broth
1 cup heavy cream

Serves 4-6

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees. Line a sheet pan with foil and/or parchment paper.

Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup: Roast the veggies

Grab your package of pre-cut squash.

Unwrap it and spread the squash out on your prepared pan.

Chop up your onion into large-ish pieces.

Add the chopped onion to the squash on the sheet pan.

Next, peel your clove of elephant garlic. Slice it thinly and sprinkle it over the onion and squash.

Drizzle the olive oil over the veggies on your pan.

Mix the veggies up with your hands to cover them with olive oil.

Sprinkle with kosher salt, freshly cracked black pepper, and fresh minced sage to taste.

Pop the pan into your preheated oven. Roast the veggies, stirring a few times during cooking, for about 1 1/2 hours at 350 degrees.

You want them to slow cook and develop nice, caramelized edges, like this:

Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup: Simmer the veggies

Transfer the veggies into a large-ish soup pot.

Pour in the chicken broth. Turn the heat on to medium-high and bring it up to a simmer.

Simmer for about 10 minutes, uncovered.

After about 10 minutes, turn your heat off.

Check your veggies for doneness. Fish out a larger piece of squash with a wooden spoon. Smoosh it against the side of the pot. If it breaks up, it’s done.

If it’s hard and refuses to come apart, simmer the soup for a few more minutes, then try again. If it breaks up easily, keep going.

Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup: Puree your soup

Once your veggies are cooked through, it’s time to puree them. I do this with a handheld stick blender.

(If you don’t have one, you can totally use a regular blender. Just transfer and puree the soup in batches to ensure that you don’t overload your blender.)

Here’s my stick blender. It’s maybe 10 years old, and still does a terrific job.

This is the chewing end.

You hold down this button to turn it on and off.

Put the stick blender in the pot.

Make sure that the head of the blender is completely submerged, or else you’ll have a splatter fest on your hands. (Remember, your heat should be off at this point.)

If you can’t get your stick blender completely submerged, tip your pot a little and use the stick blender in the deep end of the pot.

Blend the soup until it’s completely pureed.

When you’ve blended up all the chunks of veggies, your soup should be pretty smooth, like this:

Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup: Finish it off

Add the cream to the pot.

Puree the soup again with your handheld blender to combine it.

You want it to look about like this:

Creamy Roasted Butternut Squash Soup: Serve and enjoy!

Ladle out into bowls. Garnish with chopped chives. Enjoy!

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Copyright 2008-2009 The Hungry Mouse�/Jessica B. Konopa. All rights reserved.