A Cookable Feast

It was Easter Sunday, a mild, early-spring evening – not exactly the setting that inspires the creation of a traditionally cold-weather recipe. But I really wanted to put the butternut squash languishing in my refrigerator and my last three sweet potatoes to use. So this butternut squash and sweet potato soup was born. It’s a hearty, healthy, savory way to consume remaining winter vegetables.

If you don’t have any sweet potatoes or squash lying around and/or can’t stand the thought of eating anything at all snow-season-related right now, I totally get it (You probably live in a northern part of the northern hemisphere like me!). This recipe will still be here come October.

A noteworthy consideration: this recipe makes a lot of soup. It would probably be most ideal to puree the soup using a stick blender – though I don’t own a stick blender, so that’s not the way I went. I used an eight-cup-capacity food processor and had to break the soup up into two batches to process it (not before attempting to load the food processor to the brim with the whole batch, despite foreseeing it was a terrible idea; trust me, it was). Then I mixed the two processed batches together in a large, eight-cup measuring pitcher (that sucker comes in handy for more than making pancakes!) to ensure the flavor was well-blended and uniform throughout.

-1 butternut squash

-3 fairly large sweet potatoes

-3 tbs. coconut oil

-1 tbs. minced garlic, or three cloves garlic, minced

-1 medium onion, diced

-3 cups chicken or vegetable stock

-1 tsp. black pepper, plus more to season vegetables

-1 tsp. salt, plus more to season vegetables

-1 tsp. dried ground sage

-1/4 tsp. dried ground ginger

-3/4 cup unsweetened almond milk

Preheat oven to 400 degrees. Cut the butternut squash in half lengthwise and scoop the seeds out of each half. Peel the sweet potatoes and cut them into large chunks. Place the squash halves in one metal baking dish and the sweet potato chunks in another, then drizzle the vegetables with two melted tablespoons of the coconut oil and season them with salt and pepper. Roast them in the oven for 50 minutes, or until they are soft when pierced with a fork. Remove them from the oven and let cool.

In a large pot, add the remaining tablespoon of coconut oil and the diced onion. Cook over medium heat for about four minutes, until onion has softened and begun to brown. Add the garlic and cook for another two minutes. Then scoop the butternut squash flesh out from their skins and add that and the sweet potatoes, stock, pepper, salt, sage, and ginger to the onion-garlic mixture. Bring to a boil, then lower to a simmer and let cook for ten minutes. Once done, remove the pot from heat and let cool for at least five minutes. Stir in the almond milk.

Once the soup has cooled sufficiently, process it using either a stick blender, a conventional blender, or a food processor. You will very likely need to process it in multiple batches and then combine them in a large container at the end if you are using one of the latter two methods – use your best judgment! Serve warm, next to a crackling fire made with your last dredges of firewood, and with those holiday cookies you froze and forgot about as dessert.