Butternut squash soup

During the holidays there’s no better comfort food than soup… butternut squash soup, that is! Check out these hearty soup recipes from Roseanne Cantisani to warm you from the inside out.

Butternut squash soup is a comforting favorite

I love to make soup all year around but, when the cold weather sets in, soup seems to be my favorite meal. Growing up, we had various soups such as chicken, turkey, escarole with tiny meatballs, lentil, string bean and potato. Soup always seems to make me feel great. The vitamins in buternut squash soup are like no other.

I look forward to the fall to try out new and old recipes. Last year I adventured to buy a sweet squash that looks like a large acorn squash. Since I had never cooked it before, I decided to bake it and scoop out the flesh so that I could see the consistency and taste the flavor. I found it to be similar in flavor to a yam. So I dressed it with butter and whipped it like mashed potatoes. It was good! This season I will know try it as a soup or even twice baked with brown sugar and maple syrup.

Butternut squash soup is one of my favorites for fall. I first learned the recipe from my grandmother. Her method is to chop the squash and potatoes raw. This isn’t always easy, and by the time you are done, your fingers will be orange. I found that cutting the squash in half and baking it with water on a cookie sheet in the oven works much better.

While the squash cooks you are free to do other stuff, and, once it is ready, the skin peels right off. You can either use it right away or you can keep it for another time.

My latest experiment was with the seasoning of the butternut squash soup. I cooked the butternut squash in the oven early in the day and then combined it with chopped potatoes when I was ready to make the butternut squash soup. Then in a saute pan, I melted about two tablespoons of butter and half of a large sweet onion, finely chopped.

As it was cooking, I added 1/4 cup of sweet wine and a teaspoon of brown sugar. Once the onion was translucent, I added it all to the soup. After about 10 minutes of boiling, the soup was ready to serve. In each plate, the hot butternut squash soup was topped with crumbled Gorgonzola cheese. The combination of sweet and salty was so satisfying.