What is in a name? A lot, when it comes to this soup. In fact, the name sounded better than the soup tasted. But, what was I expecting? It’s squash soup. Squash isn’t just bursting with flavor to begin with, right?
I cracked open the squash. Since I’d never cooked a butternut squash before, more less a six dollar organic butternut squash, I took a little nibble of it raw. Nothing. I tossed a piece to the floor to see if the dog would eat it. No dice. It tasted like nice, fresh, organic nothing. Maybe the roasting would help.
I will say that it smelled considerably better after the roasting. I had rubbed the cut side of each half with olive oil, salt & pepper and roasted it for 45 mintues at 400. Still didn’t taste like a whole lot.
I medium onion, chopped
2 stalks celery, chopped
2 carrots, chopped
Saute in a soup pot with olive oil and a little salt until tender. Add 2 cloves of minced garlic and cook for a minute or two more. Scoop the squash flesh into the pot. Add four cups of chicken broth and bring to a boil. Reduce heat to low, cover the pot and simmer for 30 minutes or so.
From here you take it off the heat. Use an immersion blender to puree the soup, thinning it with up to 2 cups more chicken broth. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Taste. That’s kind of the problem here. The most potent flavor in almost six cups of soup was 2 cloves of garlic. That’s not a lot of flavor.
All of this is supposed to be pumped up by two teaspoons of chipotle chopped. I used chipotle puree and put a lot more than two teaspoons. It didn’t taste like much. I added a Mexican spice blend that’s heavy on the cumin. A little more garlic. Salt.
It was OK. The addition of the blob of sour cream with chipotle mixed in was nice. It was still and exercise in blandness. If you like bland or if you feel that you can jazz this up sufficiently to make it really good, then do make this soup. It’s got to be pretty good for you, right? It’s basically nothing but vegetables. But, frankly, V8 has more flavor.
