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Hubbard Squash Soup Recipe by Eve Winslow
Category: Presenting "The Curious Gardener"
I finally used the Hubbard squash that Mary-Lynn (in charge of Womanswork shipping and receiving) gave me from her garden. I made Hubbard squash soup!
Soup should be a comforting thing to make, and there is always room for substitutions and experimentation. This recipe would still be delicious if you substituted carrots or pumpkin for squash. Onion is obviously an important base flavor, so if you are out, use a leek or even some shallots.
Ingredients:
- 3 cups of skinned and cubed Hubbard squash (or any yummy squash really..)
- 1 or 2 onions or white parts of 2 leeks
- 2 carrots (or more- they make the soup sweet!)
- brown sugar
- mace
- nutmeg
- cayenne
- homemade or store bought chicken (or veg) stock
- butter
- half and half
- creme fraiche
- chopped fresh herbs- use your personal favorites: parsley, chives, or even basil or sage!
Hubbard Squash Soup:
- Skin and cube a few cups of Hubbard (or Butternut) squash. Toss with a good glug of olive oil to coat, and put onto a baking sheet. Spread the squash out so they are not too cramped. Sprinkle about a tablespoon of brown sugar, a pinch of salt and cracked pepper on top, and then roast in the oven at about 375 until golden brown and soft. If they get pretty dark in spots, that’s ok, it just adds more dimension to the soup, which is the point of roasting!
- In a large heavy bottomed pot saute a couple of onions or leeks, and a couple of carrots until the onions are translucent but not browned.
- Add a pinch of mace, a pinch of cayenne (or more if you are bold!), and a pinch of nutmeg. If you are particularly fond of one of these spices feel free to add more pinches. Other spices that would taste nice are: allspice, cardamom, and ginger (fresh or ground).
- Toss the squash from the oven into the pot and mush around to break up the pieces a little bit.
- Now you add your stock. I would just put in about 2-3 cups to start off. Let the soup simmer for 10 minutes or so.
- You can either take the soup off the heat, let it cool a little, and then puree it in batches in the food processor..OR use an immersion hand held blender, which is my FAVORITE kitchen tool besides my knife.
- Puree the soup to your liking. If it is too thick add more stock.
- Swirl in a couple of tablespoons of good butter and salt and pepper to taste. A swirl of cream or half and half never made anything taste too bad either!
- Serve in a warmed bowl with a dollop of creme fraiche and some chopped herbs.
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Great soup recipe! I am always looking for ways to use vegetables that get a bit big for single servings. Since we raise organic beef and eggs, in addition to vegetables, the over-size veggies usually go to our birds and cattle. They love them and will come running when you call out “veggy veggy veggy”. I even get our cats to eat the squash I bake – a little butter and yum yum.
Glad to have found this site.
My new year’s resolutions are to use local seed for difficult crops. My ‘Honey Select’ corn seed from a local seed distributor in Louisburg, NC was the best corn I ever planted. It had red dye on the seed to repel insects and the corn was the tastiest I ever tasted. I also bought Blue Lake bush beans from this same small distributor (They also handle license plates). I had more than 15 pounds of beans to blanch for the winter.
My other New Year’s resolution is to put composted cow manure in the area where I am planting after I rototill the whole garden. For the past three years I spread the manure throughout the garden and I think it was feeding a lot of weeds.
My last New Year’s resolution is to plant only tomatoes that are ‘indeterminate’ or vine growing. North Carolina is a vine growing country and the air and humidity is best for growing tomatoes such as Burpee Early Girl. I grew them 27 years ago on Long Island and even went into child labor picking tomatoes from my 80 tomato plants. Old and true brands aren’t necessarily a bad thing with tomato seeds. I canned 39 quarts of whole tomatoes this year!
This is my third year living here and I’ve noticed that vines do very well, sometimes too well. I’m not satisfied making wine with muscadine vines. They are too sour. I’m going to rip them out and grow only Concord seedless grapes this year. Year’s ago they didn’t have Concord ‘Seedless’ grapes. But now a Southeast nursery offers vines that are seedless. I can’t wait to try this new addition to our grapes vines.
Sincerely,
Sue in North Carolina