Butternut and carrot soup with a cream swirl
Smooth, deep orange, and freezer-friendly
Doubles easily. Freeze the rest in single portions and reheat gently from frozen or defrosted.
Butternut and carrot make a soup that turns a genuinely deep orange and tastes sweeter than the ingredients suggest, with no help from spice or herbs, both of which stay out of this one entirely. Peel the squash properly, right down past the fibrous layer under the skin, and cook everything until a spoon collapses it without resistance. The blender does most of the work, but the sieve afterwards is what makes the soup trustworthy rather than merely smooth. A swirl of cream at the end is the only finish it needs. Nothing scattered on top, nothing crunched over it. It freezes in single portions, so a big pot now is a fast lunch on a day when cooking is the last thing you want to do.
Ingredients
Contains: Milk, Celery
- 20 gunsalted butter
- 60 gonion, finely chopped — optional
- 500 gbutternut squash, peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks
- 200 gcarrot, peeled and sliced
- 750 mlclear vegetable stock
- 120 mldouble cream, most stirred in, a little kept back for the swirl
- salt
Method
Melt the butter in a large pan over a low to medium heat. Add the onion, if using, and cook, stirring often, until it has completely melted into the butter with no bite left, about 8 to 10 minutes. Do not let it colour.
Add the butternut squash and carrot, stir to coat in the butter, then pour in the stock. Bring to the boil, then turn down to a steady simmer and cook until both vegetables collapse when pressed with the back of a spoon, about 20 to 25 minutes.
Blend the soup until completely smooth, using a stick blender in the pan or in batches in a jug blender, taking care with the hot liquid.
Push the blended soup through a fine sieve into a clean pan, or into a bowl while you rinse the pan you cooked it in, pressing it through with the back of a ladle. Discard whatever fibrous scraps are left behind. This is what makes it trustworthy rather than merely smooth.
Stir in most of the cream and warm the soup through gently without letting it boil. Taste for salt.
Ladle into warm bowls and swirl a spoonful of the reserved cream across the top of each.
Watch-points
- Peel the butternut squash fully and scoop out every seed and fibrous strand from the centre before it goes into the pan.
- Peel the carrot. Both vegetables need to be cooked until they collapse under a spoon, not just tender.
- Use a clear stock. If it is home-made, strain it before it goes in so there are no vegetable pieces floating in it.
- Push the finished soup through a sieve after blending, so nothing fibrous slips through.
- If you use the onion, cook it to melting until it disappears into the liquid. Leave it out if you would rather not bother.
Some hospitals allow well-cooked, puréed onion. The leaflet this book follows does not name onion as allowed at all. Leave it out if you have been told to.
Make it more nourishing
- Stir in an extra 30 g of butter off the heat just before serving.
- Use 180 ml of double cream rather than 120 ml, stirred through rather than kept back.
- Whisk 2 tablespoons of skimmed milk powder into the stock before it goes in.
- Blend a tablespoon of cream cheese in with the vegetables for extra body.
Swaps
- Instead of vegetable stock, use chicken stock
- not vegetarian any more, but a rounder flavour
- Instead of double cream, use crème fraîche
- a slightly sharper finish. Stir it in off the heat so it does not split