The Easiest Butternut Squash Soup Ever

Okay, so today is a "stay at home and do nothing because I am sick"  kind of day and the number one thing I ALWAYS want whenever I am sick is soup! Usually I take the easy way out and heat up a can of condensed soup, slurp it down, and crawl back into bed but today was different. It was different for one reason: I had butternut squash. Butternut squash isn't ordinarily considered a game changer but today, for me, it was. The story of how I ended up with butternut squash is not an interesting one. I was in the store, saw a package of Green Giant pre-cubed butternut squash and had to have it, for some reason. I was fantasizing about roasting it, or sauteing it, or whatever else and serving it as a side to some amazing main course. But, alas, I made soup!



This soup is so good! Since I have never made it before I cut-and-pasted a few different recipes together to make something I thought sounded good and was also super easy to make. Two things I knew before I made this: 1- I love butternut squash bisque but didn't want to make bisque because I am sick and don't want dairy and 2- I needed soup or I would die.

I started the cooking by preparing all of my ingredients that needed to be prepped. By "all of my ingredients" I mean "my two ingredients." Also, since I bought pre-cubed squash all I needed to do for prep was to chop half an onion. If you don't take the low and easy road like me all you need to do to prepare a squash is peel the squash with a veggie peeler, half it, scoop the seeds, and cube away. For this recipe, which is a small batch, half a squash will do.

How gorgeous are these ingredients together?

All-in-all this soup is basically an auto-pilot dish that cooks itself and lets you sit back and enjoy a nice winter day indoors reading and checking your email every 20 minutes. It served me perfectly as my sick-day dish but would be an excellent meal starter for a dinner party. It is incredibly creamy without actually having any cream in it but is super light and crazy satisfying. I know the name of "easiest soup ever" is probably a little over zealous but I don't care...

Here is how to make this butternut squash soup-

Ingredients:

• 12 ounce package- Cubed Butternut Squash or half of one fresh butternut squash
• 1/2 medium white onion
• 3 cups chicken stock
• 1 Tablespoon- Unsalted Butter
• Salt and Pepper to taste

Instructions:

1. Prep necessary ingredients
2. Melt butter in large pot and add onion
3. Allow onion to cook in butter until translucent- this took about 5 minutes
4. Add butternut squash and chicken stock and bring to a simmer
5. Let cook for about 15 minutes- until squash is fork tender
6. Remove squash cubes with a slotted spoon and put into blender and blend until smooth- I also took put the onion into the blender because I wanted a completely smooth soup
7. Return blended mixture to stock, stir, season with salt and pepper, and serve
8. Finish with freshly ground pepper and enjoy!

Before being blended- I would probably eat this as is!

The finished product

I enjoyed my soup with one of my 6 ingredient drop biscuits and it was perfect to take a bite then slurp up a spoonful of soup.

Hope this turns out as good for you as it did for me

*playlist for today's cooking session was a super mellow and inspiring song by Jose Gonzalez called Stay Alive