This Nourishing Butternut Squash Soup is a way to enhance your inner strength and harvest happiness at the beginning of the Autumn Season.
Butternut Squash was always a top fall flavor for me. Mom would make squash pie, sweetened and spiced perfectly. Smells of nutmeg and cinnamon warmed the kitchen. We would eat it with a small scoop of vanilla bean ice cream. Or we would eat butternut squash roasted and mashed, topped with a sliver of butter, salt, and pepper. (My mouth is watering just typing this.) We would still eat pumpkin pie once in a while, but squash was her favorite.
Squash is of the earth, rooted deep, and able to grow in vines along the ground. They naturally grow wild, wherever they please if left alone. They are strong and reliable, too. Squash is an abundant plant full of nourishing qualities. Its energies provide stability, abundance, and enhancing inner strength, This nourishing butternut squash soup is full of magic – protection, warding, inner strength, and healing. Set your intentions, roast the vegetables, blend them, and enjoy the warmth and peppery back notes of this recipe.
Tweak This Recipe!
When making this soup, you can omit the dairy. Perhaps use some coconut milk or nut milk in its place, or none at all. This recipe uses frozen squash, but fresh is fine too – just note fresh squash would need to be roasted for about 40 minutes at 425 degrees versus the 25 minutes as noted in the recipe.
Prep Ahead: This is a great make-ahead meal. Soups can stay in the fridge for up to five days, or in the freezer for up to three months.
Note: Some blenders do not allow hot liquid. Always check your user manual before blending hot liquids. After roasting vegetables, you may always allow them to cool to room temperature before proceeding.
Other ways to tweak this is just by building this as you feel it. If you don’t want to put cayenne, don’t. If you’d like a pinch of cinnamon for luck, go for it! Even adding 1/2 cup of fresh spinach (for prosperity) while blending can add magic to this recipe.
Ingredients
Focus on intentions while you make this Nourishing Butternut Squash Soup.
Stir clockwise to pull in the good, and counter-clockwise to banish or ward the negatives.
Here are some examples for this soup:
Inner strength and Nourishing your soul, Abundance of love, Clarity / Intuition, banishing of negative energies, removal of stagnant energies, and protection of hearth and home. When I made this, I envisioned the coming season full of love and warmth and laughter. I let go of the worries from the day and listed a few things I was grateful for – a quiet moment with Bastion in the morning, my work email inbox volume minimizing, and the warm sun through the windows in our office just as the last hour of work chimes in. I felt that calm and held on to it, wishing for more soul-nourishing moments like that for Autumn.
To Make this Soup
- First, pre-heat your oven to 425°
- Roughly chop 1 vidalia / sweet onion
- Peel 3 to 4 gloves of garlic
- Roughly chop 1 red pepper
- Roughly chop 2 medium sized carrots
- Next, Lay out 2-2.5lbs of frozen butternut squash onto a parchment paper lined baking tray
- Lay out other chopped vegetables and the garlic with the butternut squash
- It’s ok if the vegetables layer on top of one another
- Drizzle the vegetables with olive oil
- Sprinkle the salt, pepper, oregano, nutmeg, and cayenne onto the vegetables
- You will then roast vegetables for 25 minutes
- Once roasted, allow to cool or immediately transfer to blender
- Puree slowly in small batches. Add a half cup of broth at a time while blending.
- Add the cream and sugar. Blend until smooth
- This may take a few minutes to complete. You can use the chance to taste test and add salt or pepper or even some hot pepper flakes.
- Finally, place in a soup pot to reheat.
- Pour into bowls and serve. You can top this with a little bit of sour cream, a little bit of hot sauce, some pepitas or seeds. Serve with gluten-free bread, pan-seared apple pork-chops, or just eat alone.
The end result may vary depending on what you’d like the flavor to be. I would recommend sticking to warming spices, but you can make this more savory versus sweet by tweaking the heat too. Regardless, the goal here is to nourish your body and soul with a delicious bowl of soup. Enjoy!