The Best F*cking Butternut Squash Soup

On yesterday’s episode, I boasted that I, with my partner, best bestie and husband Matt, had, over the years, developed a recipe for the best f*cking Butternut Squash Soup you’ve ever eaten. You know I don’t brag about much, so don’t take this with ANY grains of salt. I stand by it. It’s objectively the subjective truth. The only way to know, though, is to make it for yourself. And since we’ve already gotten Earth, Wind & Fire Day out of the way (DID you remember? The 21st night of September?) and tomorrow is the official first day of fall, this seems like a perfect time to make the drop.

Now, I’m not a pro recipe writer so don’t get all bunged up if it doesn’t read like the New York Times, please. I will digress, but I’m doing my best!

Photo by Viviana Rishe on Unsplash

As Theresa Giudice would say, here are the “Ingredientses”:

Butter or olive oil for sautéing purposes (C’mon, you know how much you need. You need enough! Don’t make me give you measurements.)

2 carrots (I use normal size ones. What is with those carrots that are as thick as my wrist?)

1 large onion (for this, I use white onion, because I think it’s the onion-y-est. But yellow is fine. Red/purple would affect the color of the soup but would probs otherwise be ok?)

1 leek (Leeks are like prehistoric scallions. Please look online at tutorials on how to clean them because they are full of frigging sand and nothing ruins any food like a single piece of sand in it. I’d honestly rather a hair.)

1 clove of garlic (This is a modest amount, I know! If you want more, def use more. Garlic, TBH, gives me a headache unless it is fully cooked through, which is sad, but this is a full-cook sitch.)

2 butternut squashes (I say medium for these too. You know they range from teeny tiny to toddler size. Let’s say you need anywhere from 3 to 6 pounds of squash total to make a respectable amount of soup?)

1 celeriac root (You might never have used, nor seen, nor ever even heard of celeriac root. The person you ask to help you find it at the grocery store will likely not know what it is or where it is. But trust me, it’s there. Look for the ugliest thing in the vegetable section. Uglier than a turnip! It’s wicked ugly, but it is the secret star of this recipe, so try to find it. It’ll be in the refrigerated section with the other refrigerated root veg.)

2 quarts of stock (It can be chicken. It can be veggie. It can be homemade, and if you’re the type of bitch to make your own stock, go you! But, if you’re not, you can just get cans or boxes or I even like that concentrated paste you mix with water to make perfectly wonderful soup juice.)

3 Tablespoons dry sherry (You can omit this if you don’t eff with alcohol, but it is the second secret star of this recipe. So, if I was gonna skip it, I would maybe experiment with adding a 50/50 mix of apple cider vinegar. HOWEVER, I would add it maybe one Tablespoon at a time & taste after every addition because you don’t want to fuck up a whole pot of soup because you went ham adding vinegar and have it turn out gross?) (IF YOU DO ADD SHERRY…get real sherry that you would pour into a li’l sherry glass and sip and not the terrible cooking sherry they sell near the salad dressing. Please trust me, okay?)

1 cup of heavy cream (If you are vegan, you probably have at least a few fave heavy cream alternatives you use, so use that. If you’re MAKING this for someone vegan to share, just keep in mind that whatever you use will affect the taste of the finished soup, so I don’t recommend coconut. Unless you think you’d like that, then coconut it up!)

OPTIONAL BUT, IMHO, CRUCIAL OTHER STUFF YOU SHOULD CONSIDER PUTTING IN IT:

Nutmeg (I’m allergic, but fall bitches love that shit.)

Sea Salt

White Pepper

1 pound of wild mushrooms (chanterelles, black trumpets, lobster, shiitake, portobello)

Fresh chives (These used to grow wild in our old yard. I miss that even though they probably had at least some dog pee on them.)

More cream (and or sour cream, creme fraiche, yogurt or similar non-dairy alternatives if you’re going veegs)

Tasty oil (pumpkin seed, basil-infused, truffle, whatever you like!)

Fresh sage leaves (A few, you don’t need a thousand)

Fresh popped popcorn kernals (Again, not that many)

Okay, here’s the cooking part! Finally.

Split your butternuts in half like they are in the pic above. They are hard to cut so be careful! My Nana used to literally take them on the porch and whack them with an axe, but she was dramatic. Put them on cookie sheets cut side up and brush them with oil or melted butter or whatevs and sprinkle them with salt! We season our food here, okay? (NOTE: Maybe controversh, but I don’t scoop the seeds and guts beforehand. It’s too hard and boring. I scoop them after they’re cooked and everything is soft. Some may say that this would affect the flavor of the squash, but if your palate is that refined, bless you, but then you shouldn’t be getting your recipes from the substack of an underemployed comedy writer and podcast co-host, y’know? Spoiler alert, I also don’t peel that shit either!)

Put those in the oven at 450 until the flesh is tender and you can pierce it easily with a fork or knife. It’ll take a while and it’s okay if it gets a little brown or bubbly. Just don’t burn it, obviously. Burning tastes bad.

While your squash is roasting, finely chop your carrots, onion, garlic and well-washed leek like a bastardized mirepoix and sauté them in OO or butter or both if you want, go nuts. The goal is to get them soft. Seeing a pattern here? It’s for soup, the softest food of all! It should take 8 minutes, maybe? DO NOT BURN THIS THOUGH! Onions love to stay raw for 7 minutes and 59 seconds, then burn up into charcoal at 8 minutes and 5 seconds, so watch it. Take it off the heat, when it’s soft and let it just sit there relaxing, maybe listening to a podcast.

After that, peel your poor fugly little celeriac root after washing the hell out of it. She’s very dirty! Cut into one inch chunks and simmer it in your stock of choice. (I guess I should have said to put the stock on to simmer while you were sautéing things, but in my defense, I think you’re supposed to read an entire recipe before you start it, so maybe we share the blame here?) When she is soft and also easily pierced, add your sautéed “mirepoix” pan contents to the stock pot and keep it on a low simmer.

Are your squashes ready yet? Okay, now take a big spoon and scoop out the seeds/guts and toss ‘em in the compost. (Honestly, I just fling it into the bushes because squirrels love it with a burning passion?) Then, scoop the roasted squash flesh out of the tough skins and plop it in your stock pot with everything else. If you want, you can absolutely let the squashes cool first so you don’t burn your hands, but I like to do it when it’s hot because it’s like a game of floor is lava where you actually will burn yourself at least a few times, but not that badly, so it’s fun!

You can add the sherry now if you’d like the alcohol to cook off, but if you opted for diluted vinegar, I’d wait until later, personally. Bring it all up to a boil and let it boil for a minute. Then reduce the heat again and let it simmer for, like, I dunno, 20 minutes while you go do something that isn’t soup for a little while.

Take it off the heat, cover it up and let it cool. Once cool, use an immersion blender, or in small batches, a regular blender or food processor, to fully puree the whole thing. This time, I am serious about letting it cool because if you have ever tried to blend something hot and had it explode the top off your blender and melt your face off, you know not to do that again. Anyway, now is the time to incorporate your heavy cream or heavy cream alternative into the mix. Since I’m using an immersion blender, I just pour it in as I’m working, but you can do it however you want. The aim is to get everything pureed and back into your original soup pot with the cream well-stirred into it. You can do it. I believe in you.

Now, taste it. Does it need salt? Add a little bit at a time until it tastes good to you! Does it need pepper? Same deal. I use white pepper so it doesn’t have little black specks in it, but you do whatever you want. Sometimes when I make something that gets little black specks in it and I don’t know what they are or how they got there, I ADD black pepper to make it look normal? If you opted for diluted vinegar, you can add it now, a Tablespoon at a time, incorporating well and tasting in between. (Speaking of digressions. Do you feel like you are a bad or boring cook? Have you been adding a little vinegar or citrus juice or wine to the bad or boring things you are making? If not, that might be the problem! There is a reason Samin Nosrat named her book “Salt, Fat, Acid, Heat”! But while people usually manage to get the other three, they seem to skip acid a lot. Don’t forget the acid. I even put a bit of lemon juice in pancakes. It makes a difference, I swear!)

Now, your Best F*cking Butternut Squash Soup is ready to serve immediately, if you want! However, like we’ve all heard on Top Chef a million times about soups, the flavors will marry and deepen if you let it sit for some time and reheat it later. (Please refer to the internet for food safety practices regarding how long you can leave soup out before you put it in the fridge. I personally have never poisoned myself. Yet! But I can’t be responsible for what you do to your digestive system.)

When you ARE ready to serve, there are infinite garnish options of varying levels of elegance, and we have done the following and sometimes combinations or more than one:

Topped with fresh or sautéed wild mushrooms and a drizzle or truffle oil

Floated a spoonful of cream, sour cream, creme fraiche or full-fat yogurt (or your dairy cream alternative of choice) on top, sprinkled with chopped chives (dog pee optional)

Floated a single fried fresh sage leaf on top (If you do this, it sincerely takes one second to fry a sage leaf and NO MORE - do not serve yourself a carbonized burned sage leaf. IT TASTES BAD!)

Floated a handful of freshly popped, buttered and salted popcorn to give it that “A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving” special dinner cooked by Snoopy vibes

Could this Butternut Squash Soup recipe be the new Pumpkin Spice Latte? Am I opening a chain of fast soup kiosks call “Soupbucks” all over the globe? Maybe. You tell me. But whatever you think of the soup, please go forth and enjoy the first day of autumn, the best f*cking season.