Butternut Squash Soup
This easy Butternut Squash Soup is creamy and delicious, without being loaded up with heavy cream. It’s simple to prepare, and the incredible flavor of the roasted butternut squash really shines through.
It’s easy to make soup taste good by adding lots of fat or added sugar, but I wanted to make a healthy version that’s truly delicious without those additions.
Why This Recipe Is The Best
✅ Minimal ingredients but incredible flavor – The five main ingredients you’ll need are onion, chicken or vegetable stock, butter or olive oil (a cooking fat of your choice), cinnamon, and roasted butternut squash. It’s an elegant soup that is simple but flavorful.
✅ Roasting = the biggest secret of all – For the best soup, we’ll be using Roasted Butternut Squash. Why? Because roasting caramelizes and intensifies the natural sweetness and flavor, and roasting cubes in particular maximizes the amount of surface area for that to happen. You just can’t get the same effect if you simmer the cubes in the broth.
✅ Incredibly creamy, without needing dairy – While you can add a drizzle of heavy cream or coconut cream on top to make it pretty, this soup is made without dairy entirely. It truly does not need it.
✅ Intense flavor, and not watery – Roasting the squash first cooks out a lot of its water and intensifies the flavor.
✅ No added sugar or sweetness – You’d be surprised how many recipes and restaurant versions call for adding sugar, which is an easy way to make things taste good, but totally unnecessary here. We will get a natural sweetness from roasting.
✅ Batch friendly – What I do when I make roasted butternut squash cubes is make a double batch, one for eating as a vegetable side or in a salad, and one batch for this soup. You can even keep the cubes in the freezer if you don’t want to make this right away.
How to Make It Step by Step:
Soften the aromatics
In a large soup pot, combined butter or olive oil (or your fat of choice), chopped yellow onion, salt, and pepper:
Cook for about 10 minutes, until the onion is soft:
Add the Roasted Squash Cubes
Next you’ll want to add the Roasted Butternut Squash, and it can either be hot out of the oven, or previously roasted and stored in the fridge or freezer.
Also, if you’ve never cut one before, here’s my visual guide for How to Cut Butternut Squash.
Add the cubes to the pot along with some ground cinnamon:
Stir for a couple minutes until the cinnamon is fragrant. This really enhances the flavor and gives the dish a great autumn or winter feel.
Add the stock
Add either chicken stock or vegetable stock to the pot:
Personally I like chicken stock more, but if you want to keep things vegetarian, a vegetable stock will suffice.
Bring the soup to a boil, and simmer for 2 minutes. You’re really just heating up the liquid.
Puree until smooth
In order to get the texture silky smooth, you need to blend it well.
You can either do this in the pot with an immersion blender (affiliate), or let the soup cool slightly and blend in a blender:
Why I like the blender more: The blender is a little more annoying than the immersion blender, but I find it makes for a MUCH smoother end result, so I prefer it.
Add garnishes if you want to
The soup is fantastic on its own, but you can add a touch of heavy cream or coconut cream for extra richness, and toasted pumpkin seeds for a little bit of crunch, if desired:
I add these when I’m serving company, but most of the time when I’m just making this for eating on a weekday, I don’t bother.
I love serving the soup with these Easy Drop Biscuits, Homemade Brioche Bread, or even my favorite Homemade Cornbread. Enjoy!
Recipe FAQ:
Yes, this freezes great. Store for up to 2 months in an airtight container. Thaw in the fridge the night before you want to serve again.
The soup will keep in the refrigerator for up to 7 days, but I find that the flavor starts going downhill after 3 or 4 days.
Yes, the soup can be completely made and stored in the fridge a day or two before you want to serve it. It can also be frozen.
Substitutions:
Squash variations – You can take this Roasted Acorn Squash and swap it in for the butternut. Buttercup and kabocha varieties are also great options. You can also swap in Roasted Carrots.
Spices – I do think it’s nice to add cinnamon here, but you could also try a little bit of clove, nutmeg, or allspice.
Onion – You can substitute other options like shallot or leek with delicious results, but those are pricier ingredients.
More Cozy Recipes:
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Butternut Squash Soup
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp butter or olive oil for dairy free option
- 1.5 cups chopped yellow onion
- 1/4 tsp salt
- 1/8 tsp black pepper
- 3 lb roasted butternut squash*
- 1/8 tsp ground cinnamon
- 6 cups vegetable or chicken stock**
- drizzle of heavy cream optional, for garnish
- toasted pumpkin seeds optional, for garnish
Instructions
- Melt the butter in a large pot over medium heat, then add the onion, salt, and pepper, and cook for 10 minutes, until the onions are soft.
- Add the roasted butternut squash cubes and cinnamon, and stir for 2 minutes, until the cinnamon smells fragrant.
- Add the stock, bring the liquid to a boil over high heat, then reduce to a simmer. Cook for 2 minutes at a simmer.
- Puree everything together, either using an immersion blender, or by cooling the soup slightly and blending in a blender (you will likely need to do this in batches).
- Taste, and see if it needs more seasoning.
- Serve as is, or with a drizzle of heavy cream and a few pumpkin seeds, if desired. Enjoy!
Notes
Nutrition
Nutrition is estimated using a food database and is only intended to be used as a guideline for informational purposes.
Post updated in August 2021. Originally published November 2015.
91 Comments on “Butternut Squash Soup”
I made this soup last fall, and it was pretty good (I’m more accustomed to soups heavy in cream and salt, so something healthy is always a shock to the system haha). Had a few bowls, froze the rest, didn’t think much of it. I pulled it out on a cold winter night when there was nothing left in the fridge a few months later.. And this soup tasted amazing. I wish I had frozen more because it was perfect and I’m not sure what was wrong with me when I first made it and didn’t eat the whole thing! I’ve craved it the rest of the year and can’t wait until the squash is ripe to make it again.
That’s great!! So amazing to pull something out of the freezer, made from scratch. Glad to hear it.
Simply delicious. My family loved it. Serve with hot bread and a salad for a complete meal. Thanks Joanne!!
Hi Carole, that’s wonderful! So glad you all enjoyed it. Happy cooking!
This was delicious and very easy. I roasted the squash first. I added garlic with the onion and a tbsp.of honey with the squash and cooked for another 30 min. I then blended with an immersion blender.