Butternut Squash and Carrot Soup Recipe

This creamy. Butternut Squash and Carrot soup is quite delicious and simple to make. This recipe uses simple ingredients blended to make a warming and creamy soup that makes a perfect meal in any season, especially when served with fresh, crusty bread.

This soup won’t disappoint; it’s full of gentle flavours, created by roasting the vegetables for a short time. You may be tempted to simply stir-fry the onions, add the remaining ingredients and cook until the vegetables are cooked through. However, if you want to take this delicious vegetable soup to the next flavour level, then you need to take the time to roast the ingredients. Roasting concentrates the natural sugars in the squash and the carrots, giving the final soup a real depth of flavour. It may take a few minutes more to make it this way, but the final result will be worth it.

Ingredients

This vegetable soup is creamy, golden-orange in colour, smooth in texture, with lots of gentle but deep flavour. All it needs to create it is a few vegetables, plus a little bit of time to get the very best out of them.

• Butternut Squash – the recipe uses approximately 900g of squash, weighed with the skin on. The skin isn’t used in making this soup, so it can be blended to give a creamy texture. You may leave the skin on if you wish.
• Carrots – About 200g of carrots of any variety you can get hold of. These are also washed, peeled, and roasted with the squash to intensify the vegetable’s flavour and sweetness.
• Onion – white onion, a red onion is also fine, but it will make the final colour of the soup a little darker. This is peeled and cut into rough segments to roast with the other vegetables.
• Garlic – 5 garlic cloves are added to the roasting tray, unpeeled. These are ‘popped out’ of their skins once the vegetables are baked.
• Dried Sage – 4 tsps. A fantastic herb that brings out the flavours of the vegetables.
• Maple syrup: 3 tablespoons, which enhances the sweetness of the roasted vegetables.
• Cider vinegar – 2 teaspoons are added at the end of the cooking time to highlight all the flavours. This is an optional addition.
• Stock – approximately 750mls of stock. (Water with added stock powder). This forms the basis of the soup and is what the vegetables are added to once they’ve finished roasting.
• Milk – Approximately 120mls of milk (dairy or plant-based milk) is added at the end of blending the soup, making it creamy and delicious.

How to make Butternut Squash and Carrot Soup

• Prepare the vegetables. Prepare the butternut squash by removing the outer skin and discarding the seeds. (You may wish to roast them as snacks for another time.)
• Peel the carrots and slice them into batons or roughly shaped chunks. Break 5 garlic cloves off a bulb and add them to the roasting tin.
• Peel and slice an onion into roughly 8 segments. Add these to the tray too.
• For best results, avoid overcrowding the roasting tray. Aim for a single layer of vegetables so that they roast properly and don’t steam. Use two trays if you need to.

• Roast the vegetables to release all the natural flavours and sweetness.
• Simmer the stock in a large pot and add the dried sage.
• Add the roasted vegetables to the simmering stock. Don’t forget to pop the garlic out of its skin and add it to the pot too.
• Blend the soup with a stick blender, being careful not to splash yourself with the hot soup. Take your time with this. (Don’t have a stick blender? Then a regular blender will do the job just as well, but you may need to liquidise the soup in batches, taking care not to overload the blender jug.)
• Once the soup is smooth, do a taste test to see if it needs any seasoning and add salt or pepper to suit your personal taste.
• Add the milk and decide if the soup is the right consistency for you. If it’s too thick, add a little more water or milk to thin it down slightly.
• Once you’re happy with the flavour and the consistency of the soup, serve it with some delicious crusty bread.

Tips for Preparing Butternut Squash

I’m sure that you have your own methods for dealing with butternut squash, but here are a few suggestions which may make the process a little easier and perhaps a little safer. Always try to keep your fingers out of the way… wish I’d thought of that before!

• Use a sharp knife and a cutting board. It may help to put a cloth under the board so that it doesn’t move around whilst you’re dealing with this thick-skinned vegetable.
• Slice the squash in half around the middle, above the bulbous part where the seeds are. Then use a vegetable peeler (a Y-shaped vegetable peeler is good for this task), to remove the skin of the top half and then tackle the bottom half.
• You can also poke the squash with a fork and microwave it for 2-3 minutes to soften the skin and make it easier to peel.

What’s your preferred method?

How to make perfect Butternut squash and carrot soup

• Don’t be tempted to boil the vegetables. That’ll produce a watery and disappointing soup.
• The vegetables need to be beautifully roasted… collapsing almost, but not charred. So, allow them time to reach this stage.
• Blend the soup – use a blender or an immersion/stick blender, and blend the soup until it is creamy and silky smooth. This may take a little longer if you left the skin on the butternut squash.
  • For an ultra-smooth restaurant-worthy soup, push the blended soup through a sieve (a metal sieve) to remove any remaining vegetable fibre.
• Use a well-flavoured vegetable stock for the soup. Add a bay leaf if you have any in your kitchen; this will add the subtlest of flavours to the soup.
• Don’t skip on the seasoning. Take the time to taste the soup once it’s blended and decide if it needs a little more seasoning. This can make all the difference in the taste.

Perfect Soup Garnishes

Choosing the perfect garnish to accompany your soup is important. It can really make a simple soup special. Here are a few of our favourites;

• Baked Garlic Croutons. These are really good for adding a little savoury, garlicky flavour and a good amount of crunch. Baked croutons are really simple to make and a great way to use up stale bread. Plus, because they’re baked in the oven, the kitchen doesn’t have that frying smell hanging around.
• Herbs make a delicious garnish. Try adding a few torn basil leaves to the soup, or how about rosemary or oregano? Quite delicious.
• Fresh, crusty bread? This is probably the simplest thing to do, but it is absolutely one of the best things to enjoy with soup.
• A sprinkle of your favourite cheese? Or a sprinkle of nutritional yeast if you’re vegan or even if you’re not; it tastes good. Most vegetable soups go beautifully with cheese or cheese flavours, and it adds a little protein too. Just wonderful!
• Toasted pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds or some toasted pine nuts. There are so many

Storing Leftover Butternut Squash Carrot Soup

This is the type of soup which improves over time, so it is a perfect soup recipe to make ahead of time if you’re about to cater for a crowd. It’ll be quite happy kept covered in the refrigerator for 4 to 5 days.

Butternut and Carrot soup will freeze happily for up to 3 months. Store in a suitable freezer container, and remember to allow sufficient space for the soup to expand as it freezes.

To defrost, place the container in the refrigerator overnight and reheat the soup thoroughly the following day.

Serve with your favourite garnishes and enjoy!

Hints and Tips

Make this Butternut Squash and Carrot soup even easier and quicker, try the following;

• Many supermarkets sell packaged, pre-prepared butternut squash, which takes away any difficulty in tackling this thick-skinned vegetable. Plus, it makes soup preparation a little quicker.
• You don’t have to peel the carrots; sometimes washing them is enough.
• This soup can be made ‘suitable for vegans’ if the milk is substituted with a non-dairy milk such as oat milk or unsweetened soya milk.
• Consider freezing this soup in individual portions so that you always have something delicious for lunch.

If you like this… then you may like to try these too

• Spicy Tomato and Chilli Soup
• Creamy Cauliflower Soup
• Sweet Potato and Coconut Soup
• Simple Green Pea Soup recipe
• Spicy Red Lentil Soup
• Pumpkin Soup
• Leek and Potato Soup
• Simple Corn Chowder Recipe

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