 Hey, this is Michelle Getzinger here and I can't wait to show you this soup is one of my favorites. It's called Butternut Squash Soup and I can't wait to show you how to do it. So with Butternut Squash Soup, it's a pretty simple soup. You can do it. It is a little bit time consuming though, the way that I do it. So you take a Butternut Squash and you could peel the outside of the Butternut and then take the guts out because it's hard like a pumpkin and then you could chop it all up. But I am not nimble enough to do that and the Butternut Squash to me is too hard. So what I do is I cut it lengthwise like this and then split it open and I put on a pan and I roast it. I also roast two carrots and I leave the skins on and I roast two onions. I use two different types in this soup as well so I have one vedalia, one white. Again, it doesn't matter what kind of onion you use. You can use anything you want. And I throw it on a pan. I'm going to show you how I do it. So I'm just going to show you the ingredients that I have set out. Again, you don't have to use all of these. We have some rosemary, thyme, and sage. Then I also have a little bit of chili powder, salt and pepper, and olive oil. These are green onions that I'm going to use at the end to garnish the top. And then this is really the bulk of your soup right here. I'm going to go ahead and get my cutting board. Remember, this thing is like cutting into a piece of wood. It's like rock hard. It's really easy for your knife to slip, cut off a finger, cut yourself, so just be careful. Hopefully I won't do that while you're watching. So the first thing I do is I cut off the tip of it, get a beautiful color, come over and I cut off the butt. And I know there's chefs out there that will be like, oh good Lord, we're going to watch our cutter finger off. Hopefully I won't go this way. These little buggers are tough. If you ever try to carve a pumpkin, that's kind of what it feels like. And I think when they do these on the cooking shows, like Martha Stewart and whatnot, I think they all have pre-cut or something because they never show this. I want you to see the struggle. The struggle is real when it comes to cutting up squashes and maybe I'm just weak. Try and bust her open for you. There we go. That's what you want. So if you were going to do this without roasting it, you would peel all of the skin off and you chop it up and then you could either boil it, you could saute it. But I prefer it this way because I love the way that the butternut squash caramelizes and same with the onions and the carrot. Then that way it's much, much easier to manage when it comes out of the oven. So I roast it in the oven for an hour at 425 and I drizzle it with olive oil, salt and pepper. These spices don't come in until later. I prefer to use fresh spices, but you know, you don't always have them. So we're going to use the dried ones. So just like a pumpkin, it smells like a pumpkin too. You probably use pumpkin. I've used acorn squash, just made a mess. I prefer the butternut squash because of the consistency. It really does have a, and maybe that's where it gets its name from, a more buttery consistency. So we have these guys here and then go ahead and throw them on my pan and then sweep all this into my sink and we're going to go ahead and we're going to cut up the onions. Now with the, the onions it's really simple. You're literally just going to skin them and you're going to half them up and throw them on there. It's going to be so pretty. If I can get it off to there. These Vidalia's, these are my favorite. I feel like I can just bite it like an apple. And then remember these white onions are the ones that make you cry. See if I can do it really fast without crying. All this stuff in the sink, there we go. Two beautiful onions, just going to cut them in half, set them aside and then you're going to rinse your carrots off. We're going to leave the skins on because normally it is more bitter if you leave the skins on, but in this case it doesn't really matter because it's going to go in a soup. You just cut the tips off and you cut the butts off. Just like that. Go ahead and put it on the pan, see all those beautiful vegetables. I'm going to go ahead and take my olive oil and I'm just going to drizzle it along here. You don't have to worry about the underneath of the butternut squash because you're going to be taking off that skin anyway. Oh and those onions are getting me now. I'm going to go ahead and then I'm going to get my salt and pepper and move these guys over here. And again, I'm all about just a pinch, you know. Cover it like you do with the olive oil. That's going to be your flavor. Same with the salt. It's really going to help all these vegetables kind of sweat. So we have our onion, our oven is set at 425. And lucky for you, I got up early and I roasted them because it takes an hour. So I'm going to pull out what I've got and that's what it looks like after an hour. And I'm going to go ahead and put these in and after one hour, that's what it's going to look like. So you're going to want to let it come to room temperature. I'm going to bring this over here so you guys have a closer look while I get it all prepped and ready to go. I'm just going to brush off my cutting board here. The first thing you're going to want to do is grab one of these babies. Now they are going to be hot, warm. That's one of the downsides of roasting it. I like to try and separate the skin as best as I can so I can get as much of the meat as possible. But sometimes the best thing to do is just kind of scoop it out. This is such a great soup for me. It's so warm and creamy and it feels like eating like a broccoli cheese soup texture but without the cheese and the dairy. This isn't pretty by the way. This is reality cooking. It's a hot mess. Get your hands dirty. Don't be afraid of it. Just get in there and scrape it. Now I've done this once with half acorn squash and half butternut squash. I wasn't a huge fan. It actually was much, much thicker than I thought it would be and I think it was because of the acorn squash. Even to the point where diluting it with the broth didn't really help. So I think this is the best way to do it. I do throw the carrots in there because it's the same color and it's a nice different texture. It helps keep it all the same texture and it also gives you some added nutrients. So that's pretty much what you want to do. You can see this is how much you get from one half of it. I could probably scrape it down a little bit more. And for time reasons I would do that but since you guys are watching I'm not going to worry about it too much. I'm going to go ahead and put that over there and we have, now this side didn't cook as well as the other side because I wasn't able to split it correctly like right down the middle in the half. So this one is unfortunately not, this side is not as done as the other side so it's a little bit more firm. All that means is it's really not a big deal. You're just going to have to cook it a little bit longer on the stove to soften it up. You get to see my favorite kitchen utensil today which is the emulsifier. I got one when I first got married and I didn't know how to cook and I was like, oh what is this thing? I'm never going to use this. It is the most used kitchen appliance that I have minus the coffee grinder. Now I think as I do this more and more maybe I'll cut it up but it's so hard so maybe it comes out a little bit easier. You guys find out a better solution to getting this out, let me know. Usually it's much smoother than this guys but this is what you can anticipate happening. After my last cooking show I've decided I'm just going to stop using the term voila. So hopefully you won't see me do that again. Like I said it takes an hour to make this soup but really it doesn't take an hour. It really takes you more like 15 minutes. All right I see my cluster of a hot mess here. I'm going to go over and I'm going to start throwing it into the pot. Let me get some stuff in there, just drop her all in there. This one I'm going to leave out because it has some skin on it. This is such a great comfort too. All right so we got it all in there and I'm going to rinse my hands off. Okay I want to keep it kind of at a medium heat so you don't burn it at the bottom. Okay so I have three different types of vegetable broth here. Actually this one's not a vegetable broth, it's a coconut milk soup base. Normally what I would tell you to do is just use like just a standard vegetable broth but I have these three. Once you open them in your refrigerator they can go bad so I need to use up this half container and this half container and I'm going to use this little splash of this. That's the whole thing about learning how to cook like this. You have to use what you have at hand. You're not always going to be able to go to your refrigerator and whip up a meal and have everything you need that's in a recipe so you need to learn how to be flexible and use the things that you do have. So that's what I'm going to do today. I'm going to go ahead and I'm going to pour in the rest of this vegetable broth and you can kind of give it a shake and you can kind of hear it starting to sizzle down there and I don't want it to burn the bottom of the pot. So I'm going to go ahead and dump in the vegetable broth. This is that creamy or no chicken broth but it looks like chicken soup. That's because they put that turmeric in it and I won't need to add turmeric to this at all because everything is already orange. Go ahead and set this aside and then anytime I get a chance to get a little extra protein I do it and this broth here is actually very creamy and that's what we want since we can't put any dairy in it or any heavy creamer. So I'm going to go ahead and use some of this vegan broth here and then I'm going to add not all of it but just a little splash of this coconut milk. That's where I would say use soy milk, coconut milk. You can use the soup base especially made for this. I'm just going to add a little bit of this in there. Again you've got to use what you have and grab myself a spoon and we're going to give it a little toss and see all those big pieces in there. Now one butternut squash medium size, two carrots and two onions and some vegetable broth. This is about the size to feed about four people. So I'm going to go ahead and get out my favorite kitchen tool. Come in two parts here. Screw this on. This is what goes in the dishwasher. Go ahead, turn that up a little bit. Now this can be messy. So how you use one of these is just stick it into the pot. If you lift this out, it's kind of like having a mixing blade and the batter goes everywhere. It's going to be the same thing. So you want to make sure it's underwater. Go ahead and plug it in. Remember it's got a big blade so don't touch it. Put your finger near it. Don't let your kids play with it. Stick it under there. Bring that baby on. You just want to get in there and you're going to smash up and grind up all the big roasted carrots and onions. My advice is you probably should not wear a white shirt. Another quick tip with using the emulsifier. Do not use this to mash potatoes. When you mash potatoes with a masher, it smashes them up. When you mix it with this, it binds it together and it will make it very gummy and glue-like. So always use a potato smash or not an emulsifier when making mashed potatoes. This takes the longest. I can tell by doing this I'm going to need to add a little bit more of the regular vegetable broth. So I'm going to go ahead and grab another container of that. So this is what I'm talking about improvising. I actually don't have any more of the vegetable broth I want to use and I don't want to use any more of the protein and the coconut milk. So what I'm going to do is just going to add a little bit of water to it to kind of loosen it up. So about four cups total of a combination of broth, liquid, whatever you want to add into it. That's about what you need. I think we're good for now. I'm not going to put this baby away yet because I'm going to need it again I think. So I'm going to go ahead and give it a stir. And now is the seasoning time. So I'm going to go ahead and turn this down a little bit. Get my spoons and I'm going to get my spices. Okay, again we're going to do sage, rosemary, and thyme. And a little bit, just a little bit of this chili powder. Before I start adding spices, I got to know what the base of it tastes like. It's good. It's sweet. I can taste that vedalia onion. It needs a little bit more, a little bit more salt to it. I'm going to go ahead and give it another sprinkle. Remember when you're not dealing with processed food, you're really just dealing with the basic flavors of the vegetables that you're using. So you're going to need to salt and season everything. When you're buying things like panera or wherever, everything's been seasoned for you. So you just got to make sure that it tastes good. Okay, so I'm going to go ahead now and add a little bit of rosemary. So if you were doing this and measuring it out, I'd say probably about a half a teaspoon. A little bit of thyme, just give it a little shake. Even less of the thyme than the rosemary. Rosemary is a pretty strong flavor, so you want to watch it. And the flavor seems to come out a little bit more when you cook it. The longer it's in there cooking, it's like the oils come out of the spice. And if you're cooking with dry herbs, it's different than cooking with fresh ones. Fresh ones are always stronger. It smells good. Sage, that's the smell of Thanksgiving to me. Probably less than a quarter teaspoon here as well. And then before I add any chili powder to it, I'm going to give it a nice stir. I'm going to taste it again. Like I said, this is one of my favorite soups. Look how thick that is. It's like a porridge. Oh yeah, that's really good. I need a little bit more salt though. And a little bit more pepper. Very tiny. I'm not a hot person. This little bit of heat in the back goes a long way. But just a sprinkle, tiny little sprinkle. And if you're crazy and you like it hot, then go ahead and dump the whole thing in. But I don't recommend that. So I'm going to give that a stir. And then we're going to taste it one more time. And I'm going to show you the finished product. Very good. So while this is going to sit here for a minute, I'm going to chop up the garnish. And you can see what it looks like when I have it all plated up. And my favorite thing to garnish it with is those little tiny beautiful green onions. Let me get this out of your way so you can see. Now, when you're cooking, you don't need to always have new plates and whatnot. Keep it as simple as possible for you because cooking three times a day is difficult to begin with. So use as few dishes as possible. I'm going to go ahead. I'm going to get two of these out because I really like them a lot out of the way so you can see. They have a little bit of a flavor to them. If you don't have fresh green onions, you can use those like canned French's onions. I've been able to find some gluten-free ones. They've been real nice little crispiness on the top. Honestly, if I can, I always like to use the fresh garnishes. Another good thing to put on the top would be like pumpkin seeds. Although I hate pumpkin seeds myself, I'm not a huge fan. But it does taste good when you have them on top. Also, the other thing you can use is sunflower seeds. It makes a nice little garnish as well. Let me get this one seed out of here. Just get my nice little chop. Now I'm going to go ahead and get the ladle. I'm going to plate it up for you so you can see the finished product. I'm just going to go ahead in there and give it one last stir. That's about the consistency that you want it to be. You could emulsify it a little bit more to make it a little bit smoother, but I like more rustic soups and things to be chunky. Number one, because I'm lazy, but number two, I think they're a little bit more filling. Go ahead and put that in a bowl and put a couple on the top. Because I'm a saltaholic, one more spoon, more salt on it. You can serve this with like a nice baguette or some toast or some crackers. Serve it with a salad. There's a lot you can do, but it's almost a meal in itself. So thanks for watching it. If you have any questions, don't hesitate to leave them down below. And I'll see you next time. Have a great day.