A New View of Healthy Eating: Vegan Dairy-free Butternut Squash Soup

By Melanie A. Albert, intuitive cooking expert, author, and speaker. Founder & CEO Experience Nutrition Group, LLC

This week I was doing some recipe flow testing in preparation for some videos, and I had the pleasure to cook the vegan dairy-free butternut squash in my book. It had been awhile since cooking this soup and I’m so glad I did. It’s a beautiful bright orange sweet soup perfect for the Fall season, even here in Phoenix!  Cooking this soup brought back memories of playing in the crisp fall leaves in our yard in Pennsylvania where I grew up and all the fun times carving pumpkins.

A few photos from the delicious soup I cooked this week, with Arizona honey as my sweetener.

Excerpt from A New View of Healthy Eating: Vegan Dairy-Free Butternut Squash Soup

Create your own easy-to-prepare sweet, creamy butternut squash soup. Garnish with pan-fried herbs and a drizzle of oil (walnut, pumpkin seed, or olive oil) for a beautiful presentation. When served warm in the fall, butternut squash soup is ideal for a chilly Thanksgiving. Served cold in the summer, it’s perfect for a picnic.

SIMPLE INGREDIENTS

• 1 ½ tbsp organic extra virgin olive oil
• 3 shallots, minced
• 2 ½ cups butternut squash, peeled and steamed until fork tender
• 3 ½ cups veggie stock
• 2 tbsp sweetener: maple syrup, molasses, or brown rice syrup
• ¾ tsp sea salt
• 1 tbsp olive, walnut, or pumpkin seed oil
• Pan-fried basil for garnish

SIMPLE STEPS

1. Gather your mise en place.
2. To prepare the soup, preheat a (6- to 8-quart) soup pot to medium.
3. Add olive oil to the pot.
4. Add shallots and sauté until golden and translucent.
5. Pour steamed butternut squash, veggie stock, sweetener, and sea salt into the pot.
6. Simmer and cook for 10-15 minutes.
7. Using a blender or hand-stick blender, blend until smooth.
8. Garnish with pan-fried basil and a drizzle of olive, walnut, or pumpkin seed oil.

After you’ve learned the simple soup cooking process with butternut squash, intuitively create your own soups with different winter squash, such as acorn or pumpkin, or even sweet potatoes. Experiment with various herbs and oils as a garnish.

If you’re looking for some simple, healthy recipes and the culinary methods to create the recipes, I invite you to take a look at my new book, A New View of Healthy Eating.