Food You Can Eat: Butternut Squash Soup

There's no meat, butter or eggs in it, so why would I eat it?

15/2/24 butcherbakertoiletrymaker 14
Gross.

First things first:  Back in 2018 we ordered a quarter pound of butternut squash seeds for our garden from Johnny’s Selected Seeds.  That is…a shitload of seeds, which we did not expect.  Theoretically, seeds go bad after a couple of years and they will fail to germinate.  So, for the past four years, Mrs. Butcher has insisted that we need to order new butternut seeds for the garden.  Every year, I have ignored her and planted what we already have in stock.  Every year, we get a shitload of butternuts.  This soup is one of her favorites, which is a good thing because we need something to work through the harvest and I hate this soup.  So at least one of us is making the sacrifice.

A caveat before we get started:  While the recipe calls for a pound of squash, I don’t bother with weighing them.  I just grab what looks to be the right amount and use those.

Here’s what you’ll need:

Olive oil

2 Lg. Onions, diced

1 Lb. Butternut Squash, peeled, seeded and chunked

1 Lb. Sweet Potatoes, peeled and chopped

3 Ribs Celery, diced

4 Tbsp. Fresh Sage, minced

2 Cloves Garlic, grated

1 tsp. Paprika

Salt and Pepper, to taste

½ tsp. Nutmeg

¼ tsp. Cinnamon

2 C. Cauliflower Rice

1 Can Unsweetened Coconut Milk

4 C. Chicken or Vegetable Broth

Heat the oil in a pot over medium flame.  Add the onions, squash, sweet potatoes, and celery.  Cook, stirring occasionally, until the onions are translucent.

Then add the garlic and all the seasonings along with the cauliflower rice and sauté and additional minute, stirring frequently. 

From here you have two choices:  you can either continue to use the pot you started with and be prepared to let it sit for an hour, or you can cheat and use a pressure cooker.  I cheated and transferred everything to the pressure cooker.

Add the coconut milk and broth and seal the pot.  Then cook on high pressure for 10 minutes.  Release the pressure manually.

Using a blender or a food processor, blend until smooth.  Taste and adjust seasoning as needed.

Serve garnished with a dollop of plain yogurt.

I will never eat this. But I hear it is very good.

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About butcherbakertoiletrymaker 602 Articles
When you can walk its length, and leave no trace, you will have learned.

14 Comments

  3. How do you not have issues with squash vine borer moths? Like I can fight the squash bug battle and win, but I cannot stop the squash vine borer moths.

    Do you start the vines later in the summer?

    (I’m not even planting any squashes this year and I’m going to still order several of the lures just so I can fucking kill a bunch of the squash vine borer moths.)

  4. Wouldn’t you get new seeds from the squash that grow?

     

    Speaking of seeds, last summer my dad gave me a couple of moonflower pods. I don’t know where he got them from. He’d been growing them in pots and they looked neat. I planted them in my garden, not that I ever really got to enjoy them since they bloom at night. I saved some pods for myself to plant this year, since the IL climate won’t accommodate them coming back. And mysteriously started getting videos for datura trips suggested to me by the YouTube algorithm gods. (As in, people who take a drug called datura and then trip on it, a la LSD, for those of you fellow uncool kids). Datura is the seed of…. the moonflower plant. How did YT know? Anyway, this is very much NOT a food you can eat.

    • Butcher probably has more details, but squash is pretty notorious for its seeds being unfaithful to the parent. I seem to recall they even crosspollinate with stuff like canteloupe, but that might be an exaggeration I invented.

      • Yeah I let pumpkins rot in the front yard again over the winter for the second time to see if I get some fun yard decor this autumn. The stuff that grew last year wasn’t the same as the pumpkins I’d bought and let rot over that first winter.

        Who knows what happens this autumn!

    • We’ve tried saving seeds in the past but there are two issues at play. The first is you need to plant heirlooms to get reliable generations. The second is the process of saving seeds means letting a portion of your yield get just shy of rotting so the seeds mature and then there’s the whole cleaning and drying process which is a gigantic pain in the ass. So after a couple of years we said fuck it.
      However, we do save a few heads of garlic each year and plant the cloves in the fall. So they’re sustainable and they also acclimate to the soil which makes them perform better over the years.

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