This golden butternut squash soup is both silky and satisfying. The texture comes from roasting the squash in the oven and finishing the soup in a pressure cooker. The intense Butternut squash flavor comes from roasting the squash whole so the flavor isn’t diluted from cooking in water. The coconut milk and the Madras curry powder complement the squash in a subtle and totally seamless way, and the crunchy garnish of Happiness Foods Sprouted Pumpkin Seeds make every bite your best bite!
Elizabeth Karmel
Makes approximately about 2 ½ quarts (10 cups)
- 4 ½ cups or 2 pounds, 5 ounces roasted Butternut squash from 1 large or 2 medium Butternut squash
- 12 ounces or 2 2/3 cups chopped white onions
- 2 ½ cups stock, can use beef, chicken or vegetable
- 1 cup white wine
- 1 ½ teaspoons kosher salt
- ¼ teaspoon ground white pepper
- ¾ teaspoon Madras curry powder, divided
- 1 (13.5 ounce) can of unsweetened coconut milk, not lite
- ¼ cup Happiness Foods Sprouted Pumpkin Seeds, for garnish
- Olive oil
- Roast squash whole in the oven by rinsing the whole squash, drying it, and placing it directly onto the oven rack [in the middle of the oven]. Bake the squash for an hour in a preheated 350ºF oven.
- Don’t prick the squash or score it or do anything to it but rinse it and toss it on the shelf. After an hour or more if the squash is very large, turn off the heat and let the squash continue baking in the residual heat for 30 minutes. Since squash varies in size, you will need to adjust the timing accordingly. The 30-minute residual cooking isn’t necessary with a smaller squash.
- You can tell if it is done if a small thin knife sticks into the squash as easily as room temperature butter. But do not over-cook the squash, you want the squash to retain its shape, and not collapse on itself.
- When the resting time is up, the squash should be very soft. So soft that you can cut it in half lengthwise, very easily. The seeds are easy to remove with a spoon—in fact just as easy—if not easier—to remove them when they are uncooked because the fibers are no longer holding on to them.
- Continue Making the Soup in a Pressure Cooker: In a pressure cooker, sauté the onions and enough olive oil to coat the bottom of the pot for 16 minutes on a low sauté setting.
- Add the cooked butternut squash. Stir together.
- Add the stock, wine, salt, pepper and ½ teaspoon of curry powder and set on high pressure cook for 4 minutes.
- When the soup is done, clean any residue off the lid and puree using an immersion blender. Add the coconut milk and the reserved ¼ teaspoon of curry powder.
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Stir well and serve garnished generously with Happiness Foods TM Sprouted Pumpkin Seeds.
NOTES: Use this cooking technique for all hard winter squash. Once you have the squash baked, the skin peels off in wide pieces, and you can mash it (or rake spaghetti squash into strands) with a fork. Incidentally, there is something about roasting the squash without opening it that gives it a silkier texture and a cleaner, more intense flavor.