It’s Fall and butternut squash can be found everywhere in the grocery stores. Even the restaurants around town have butternut squash as a main staple in a lot of their dishes. A popular item on menus is butternut squash soup. There are so many variations of this recipe. I’ve had an Asian inspired soup with coconut milk and curry powder, I’ve made a recipe that involved just cooking the squash in broth with herbs, I’ve had versions that included sweet potato in the butternut squash soup, and a version with carrots. But the recipe that is my all time favorite is this Roasted Butternut Squash & Red Onion Soup. I like how the squash and red onions caramelize in the oven so beautifully which gives the entire soup a lovely brown sugary sweet flavor. 

Roasted Butternut Squash & Red Onion Soup:

Ingredients:

• 1 lb cut butternut squash
• 1 medium red onion
• 6 cloves garlic
• Olive oil
• Salt & pepper
• 1 tbsp brown sugar (optional)
• 1 cup milk or 1/4 cream (optional)
• 5-6 cups broth or water

Directions:

• Preheat oven to 375 degrees.
• Place the butternut squash, chopped onions and garlic cloves on a cookie sheet and drizzle 2 tbsp olive oil, salt and pepper and mix together and spread on the cookie sheet. Place in oven and cook for 30-45 minutes until the squash is cooked through and tender. Toss around half way through to prevent the vegetables from sticking to the pan.

• Once the butternut squash is tender take out of oven. At this point the vegetables are done. You can serve this as a side dish if you like.

• In a pot add the roasted vegetables, brown sugar, and 4-5 cups vegetable broth or waterand cook for 5 minutes until all the soup comes to a slow boil.

• Take the soup off the stove and puree with a hand blender. Place the pan back on the stove and add 1 cup whole milk or 1/2 cup cream if you want. Mix into the soup over low heat.

• Serve warm with extra black pepper.

Cook’s Notes: If you prefer your soup chunky, you can skip the blending process and just add cream and serve. This will make a soup that has chunks of sweet butternut squash and caramelized onions in a creamy broth. You can also choose to skip the cream completely and serve the soup in it’s own broth as well.