Curried Butternut Squash Soup

The best thing about soup is that you can throw just about anything you have in your pantry in a pot and it will turn out beautifully. 

For curried butternut squash soup, though, there are some ingredients that you can’t go without:
Butternut squash - Butternut squash is the star of the show. With its sweet and nutty taste, it’s the perfect squash for curried squash soup. Make sure you peel it and deseed it before adding it to the pot. 
Apples - Apples may seem like a silly ingredient, but hear me out they are the perfect addition to curried butternut soup. I suggest using Fuji or Honeycrisp apples, as these will give you the sweetest flavour to help balance some of the curry flavour.
Vegetable stock - This is a sick soup thanks to blending the vegetables and adding cream, so it’s essential that you do not skip the vegetable stock. If you’re not on a vegan diet, you can use chicken stock instead if that is what you have on hand.
Vegetable oil - I use vegetable oil, but you can easily substitute olive oil instead. Olive oil will be delicious, too!

Cream is going to help this curried butternut squash soup become, you guessed it, creamy! You can use a variety of creams in this soup, like coconut cream or even coconut milk. 

If you are not vegan, though, you can use sour cream. If you do use sour cream, though, I still suggest using coconut milk to thin it out a little bit.

Like I said, butternut squash is the star of the show here, but I understand that it’s not something you always have on hand, and you might not be able to get it locally. 

Don’t fret, though, because there are ways to still enjoy a curried squash soup without the butternut squash.

Bear in mind, if you are substituting butternut squash, it will no longer be butternut squash soup, but it’ll still be very good squash soup.

If you do not have any butternut squash, you can substitute for acorn squash. This will have a very similar taste, and you will prepare it the same way as you would butternut squash.

Follow these tips for the best curried butternut squash soup of your life:

Don’t forget to peel the squash. You can eat the peel of a squash, but it will definitely affect the texture of the dish. Leave them out for the creamiest curried butternut squash soup possible.

Roast the squash. To really elevate the squash and add some flavour, roast the squash before adding it to your pot. This will give the dish a totally different flavour profile, and is especially tasty during the fall.

Add spices at each stage. Soup tastes best when the flavours are consistent throughout. One way to do this is by adding the spices (aside from the curry powder) at each stage. For this particular recipe, add them with your onion, then with the squash and apple, and then a bit at the end.

Make it spicier. If you want this dish to be even spicier, add more cumin and curry powder. To balance the flavours when you make it spicier, add some garlic and pepper, as well. For a super spicy dish, add red pepper flakes.

Curried butternut squash soup is so easy to store and reheat. It can easily be frozen, or you can keep it in the fridge. It tastes so divine the second time around that  you don’t even know you’re having leftovers!

To reheat leftover soup, put it in a saucepan, perhaps the same pot you used before, depending on the amount you are reheating.

Put it over medium heat, stirring occasionally to prevent it from scorching. Once it’s hot and smooth enough, give it a try. 

It should have taken on more of the spicy flavours, but feel free to add more garlic, curry powder, pepper, and cumin if you want it to have more of a bite.