Vegan Butternut Squash Soup Recipe - Vegan Christmas Recipes

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Squash makes an excellent winter soup because you can get it really nice and creamy without any diary and with very little fat.

So what I’m gonna do in this recipe is actually roast the squash to really bring out the flavour. Roasting brings out the sugars in the vegetable so it’s gonna be really delicious.

I have cut up my squash into quarters and I’ve scooped out the seeds and you do that when you cut it in half.

Anyway, ok! So, that’s cut then we need to do is just poke some holes in it with a fork and then I’m going to take some olive oil because this is going into the oven which is very very drying. You need to add just a touch of oil to protect your squash.

And I’m just putting that’s probably half a teaspoon of oil. You really don’t need much and then you just rub it with your hands, rub it all over the cut flesh and also on the back on the skin.

And that was even probably a little bit too much oil, this is really quite oily. So, maybe like a quarter of a teaspoon of oil, it’s not much at all so you don’t need to be worrying about fat with this.

Alright! Once you got that all coated, then you’re gonna take some salt and of course I didn’t open it before I get oil all over my hand, just take a little pinch of salt, rub it in your fingers and then get it all over this piece of squash.

What this is gonna do is draw the moisture out of the squash cells so that it softens but because of the oil at first, the water inside the squash which has all the lovely squash flavour is not gonna come outside of the oil.

Now a lot of people when they bake their vegetable will bake them face down and a lot of times they’ll put it in a shallow baking dish with some water, that actually steams the squash and it will cook a little bit quicker than if we bake it like this but it doesn’t bring out the flavour quite as well.

So for this what we were gonna do is actually put it face up on the baking sheet because as the moisture comes out of the squash it’s going to collect in this little hollow. If we put it face down all of the juices is just gonna fall out and it’s gonna lose flavour.

So there we go, now the squash is gonna go in first because it takes quite awhile, it takes about forty to fifty minutes and then once that is starting to get soft we put in the peppers and the garlic to roast a little bit later.

Alright! So the squash has been in the oven for about twenty minutes and I’ve got it in 375F. Next I’m going to put in the peppers and the garlic. And the peppers, same thing as the squash but you don’t need to poke it with the fork because the vegetable is not as dense.

But we want to rub some olive oil around it and then a bit of salt. The garlic is fine, you just chopped up the top and then a bit of olive oil and spread it just on the top where the flesh is exposed and then those two are gonna go in the oven with the squash. (This is hot!)

Now this way of roasting garlic is also really excellent for an appetizer, you can just serve it surrounded by some crackers and then just squeeze out each of the individual garlic cloves and spread it on the cracker, really yummy! Ok!

So, another twenty minutes for those vegetables and then we’ll get started on the soup.

Alright! So the peppers and the garlic have been in the oven for about twenty minutes and this squash has been in for forty and they’re looking beautifully cooked right now.

They’ve got some juice collecting in the centres especially the peppers which is excellent. That’s were all the flavours are coming from.

So in the meantime while I let those guys cool off enough that I can handle them I’m going to soothe some onions so I get some olive oil there.

Alright! My onions are sizzling away back there, they’re just getting soft and I don’t know if you can see but there’s some beautiful juices going on inside this pepper, some in the squash as well and the garlic is looking really nice and soft.

So what I’m gonna do is just chop these peppers up roughly just stay in half and throw them in with the onions, make sure you don’t lose any of those beautiful juices.

So the peppers are in there with the onions and then the garlic comes out really easily, you just need to fold the skin back and pop these guys out. They’re gonna be really soft, their flavour will be beautiful from the roasting.

Now, I’ve used a butternut squash which has a really thin skin that I can actually put it in this soup along with the flesh, I just need to cut the ends off because those are the rough parts and were gonne puree this soup next so don’t worry too much about how big these pieces are.

So I got all my vegetables on the pot now with some vegetable stalks and what I’m gonna do is puree it with my trusty hand blender.

Remember to put the openings of the hand blender underneath the liquid otherwise you’re gonna splash yourself and its pretty hot so don’t do that.

Alright! Now that I’ve got this soup really nice and smooth by pureeing it, I’m going to add my seasonings which I’m gonna use some cayenne pepper, use as much or as little as you like. It’s a powerful stuff so don’t be too liberal with it unless you really like it spicy.

I’ve got some coriander next and some cumin. Here we go! Some salt of course and because this is a pretty thick soup, you’re gonna need a fair bit of salt here.

Ok and add a little bit of black pepper. Give that a stir through, let it simmer on the heat for a few minutes and then give that a taste to make sure it’s seasoned the way you like it.

Alright! I’ll let this go for a few minutes and I’ll just give it a taste. Mine needs just a little bit more salt. Stir that through and then the last thing I’m gonna add is some lime zest and some lime juice. So, Ive got my lime here, I zested it first and then I chopped in half.

If you try to zest it after u chopped it in half it’s not gonna work very well. And then just give it a squeeze. This is my zester, works well as a juicer as well.

You can also grate the outside of the lime just be careful not to go too far into the lime, the white part underneath the green is bitter and you don’t want that part.

Zesters are really cheap; you can actually pick one at value villages for a couple of bucks.

Alright! Once you stir the lime through your ready to serve. Just spoon it into bowl and I’m gonna garnish mine with a few toasted pumpkin seeds because they just look really pretty and a little bit of black pepper.

So there you go! A beautiful healthy squash soup, like I said I do mine with the skin for butternut squash because the skin has really great nutrients as well. You can use any type of squash in this recipe though if it has a harder skin I wouldn’t put the skin in there.

Alright! Enjoy your soup!