Butternut Squash Apple Soup

Today for dinner I had Butternut Squash Apple Soup and a Jalapeno cheese bun with some Jalapeno Jam on it. This is happiness people. I made every single thing I ate. It might still be a bit early in the year for a thick soup like that. Its still over 20 every day. But I saw it in one of the cookbooks at Williams Sonoma and I had to make it. It seemed too simple. But it turned out great!

As usual I changed some things for what I had and added some extra spices (read: flavour). If you've never cut, cubed and peeled a squash you are not missing out. It was horrible. I probably had quite a bit of waste on my squash due to me really just not wanting to deal with it. I have excellent knives, but can never get good at this. Also, I've peeled so many apples in the last week that I'll never mope about skin again.

Ok! Here's the recipe, and below what I changed and added.

2 TBSP Olive Oil
1 Thinly Sliced Yellow Onion
Sea salt
1 Clove Garlic
1 Litre Water or Low Sodium Chicken or Vegetable Stock
3 Lbs Butternut Squash (Peeled, seeded and cubed)
2 Apples (Peeled, Cored, Chopped)
1/4 TSP Fresh Nutmeg
6 TBSP Plain, Low Fat Yogurt - For Serving

Things I changed;

More Olive oil, kind of as needed for to get the onions and garlic cooking.
2 cloves of garlic, grated.
I used super low sodium chicken stock, but I made up for it with some extra salt.
3 Lbs = 2 Squashes for me.
I used 3 apples, they were small and I figured why not?
I used No Fat Greek yogurt. Thicker and some extra tang.
I also added a pinch of cumin, cinnamon and pepper. A bit heavier on the pepper.

Once you've measured out your ingredients and cut up all that squash you're honestly pretty much done.

Pour the oil into your pot, I used my large dutch oven. Grate the garlic into the pot and put the onions in. Cook until slightly translucent - about 5 minutes or so.

Add the cubed apple and squash to the pot.

Add your spices! Be gentle on the S&P as you can add those before serving and stir in too.

Pour the stock/water over top.

Bring to a boil.

Once boiling, reduce to a low simmer and cook for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, make sure you can easily pierce a cube of the squash with a fork.

When you can do that, transfer your soup to either a food processor or vitamix in batches to puree. If you have an immersion blender, this is pretty much what it was made for. I used my immersion blender. It pureed the now soup really quickly and I didn't have to mess around with hot liquid transfer.

That's it! Ready to eat!

I liked to take everyone's soup spoons and put the greek yogurt on them, then serve it with the spoon of yogurt half resting in the soup. Easy to stir around into the soup. I didn't add it every time I served it, but I liked the added (fake) richness it brought since there's no cream or milk in this soup!

Enjoy!

Here is the cookbook I used for the recipe:

Healthy in a Hurry