Roasted Butternut Squash Soup

IT’S DECORATIVE GOURD TIME, MOTHERFUCKERS!

It’s also time for soup. Warm, tasty, nourishing soup. It’s Autumn (Fall, for you folks who hate syllables), and this year, Autumn feels like it skipped right to Winter, it’s a trip. And it’s cold.

So here’s a gourd that’s both decorative and tasty as hell: The butternut squash.

If you’re not a lazy ass, buy an actual squash, split it in half, oil it up and bake it til it’s soft and roasty.

But since I’m a lazy ass, I bought a 2 pound package of already cut up squash from Costco. Convenience and plastic packaging to fuck up the earth (I recycle, but the fact is, I should do better…but this screamed at me, and who am I but obedient to screaming produce?) but again…lazy.

So yeah, rinse this shit off, toss it with olive oil – enough to lube it up good, man, don’t skimp. No one likes being roasted dry.

While you’re roasting the shit out your squash – about 20 minutes at 425 degrees – chop up some onion – about a half of a big one or if your onion is petite, just chop up the whole thing. I prefer Walla Walla Sweet onions, but you do whatever. It’s an onion, who cares.

Also chop up 4-5 fat cloves of garlic (don’t you dare skimp, infidel).

Toss the onion into a pan with your favorite lube – I go half and half with olive oil and unsalted butter (I’m fine with salted butter, but I like more control over the salt content at the end). Sautee that onion on medium high til almost translucent, then toss your garlic in there. Also toss about a tablespoon of chopped dry parsley (fresh if you got it, I did, but I was too lazy to go outside to pick it) and a half teaspoon of dried ground thyme (I like ground spices a lot for soups) as well as about a half teaspoon of crushed red chili flakes for a little heat. Sautee it to just shy of the point where you’re like “Oh fuck, is that burnt? WHEW, no, not burnt.” Because I like a little of the brown crusty in there, but if you overcook your garlic, then you have to go feel bad about yourself because bitter garlic sucks.

Ok, so I am lucky because I have a badass blender. I did not always have a badass blender, and before I had this badass blender, I used an immersion blender (also badass, but I don’t prefer it for soup). And before that, I had a hand mixer and I would use that and then toss the mostly mixed up stuff into a regular blender in batches, WHICH YOU CAN TOTALLY DO, but that’s not what I did here.

Toss your roasty squash and your not-burnt onion and garlic mixture into your blender (or whatever it is you’re pulverizing this with).

Make sure you have a liquid in here. I use chicken stock that I make from the carcasses of Costco rotisserie chickens. You can use something else like a good vegetable broth if you want to keep it vegetarian (and you can skip the butter at the beginning, too, and keep it vegan. You do you).

I started with about a half cup or so of chicken stock, reserving another half cup or so for if I wanted to thin it out more later. It’s good to have options.

Toss in about a half teaspoon of ground white pepper. Blend the crap out of it.

 

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I’m not sure why I made that video. I apologize.

Anyway…

Once you’re done blending the crap out of it, decide how much you want it salted. I ended up, overall, adding about a teaspoon and a half plus about 6 cranks of fresh pepper in there. You might want less. Why? Shit, I don’t know, but really, do whatever you want, I’m not your mom (unless you’re one of my kids reading this, then I’m totally your mom).

Toss into a bowl and garnish or don’t garnish, I don’t care if you’re boring. I PERSONALLY like a little dollop of sour cream or crema and a smidge of this rad-as-fuck sundried tomato pesto that I found at Costco. It’s really good. I got it to go with these butternut squash ravioli that I also found at Costco, so it only stands to reason that it would go with the butternut squash soup (it does).

Keep away from French Bulldogs. They think they like soup. They’re assholes though and will eat anything and they don’t deserve soup.

Also, while I was too lazy to go pick fresh parsley for the preparation of this soup, for some reason I was not too lazy to pick a little sprig of fresh thyme for the garnish. I’m nothing if not inconsistent.

Enjoy.