Chipotle Butternut Soup

This chipotle butternut soup is a perfect colder weather dish that encompasses everything to love about Autumn. Of course, butternut squash by itself makes a great soup, but when blended with some chipotles in adobo and a few other spices it becomes a seriously crave-worthy bowl.

I love soups, and living in Europe there are plenty of options. From a classic Ukrainian borshch to lapin au vin (I suppose stew counts too) I probably make soup at least twice a week. In fact, soups make for great leftovers as well since they freeze great (avoid noodle soups) and reheating is a breeze.

My chipotle butternut soup recipe is not only easy to make, but can be customized in so many ways. I love when people take my recipes and make them their own – just be sure to drop a comment and tell me what you did so I can try it as well.

What You’ll Need

This is a one-pot meal so the only thing you really need is a large stew pot. I love to use my Emile Henry Cocotte which is my go-to for soups, stews, and more. For this soup I actually used a tall walled pan for the sautéing portion before moving everything to the cocotte.

Other than the actual pot you will need kitchen basics like cutting boards, prep dishes, and a large spoon.

How To Make This Chipotle Butternut Soup

While this recipe has quite a few ingredients, you can get away with subs or leaving some things out entirely. For example, the parsley, mushrooms, gruyere, and mustard oil are garnishes. I personally like them with this soup but you can replace them with some roasted pumpkin seeds, pea sprouts, croutons, or whatever else you like.

If you would like to make this recipe vegan you can replace the butter with oil or another substitute, and use a vegetable based stock as the liquid.

Ingredients

• 1.5 kg Butternut Squash – Peeled, halved, cored, and diced.
• 3 tbsp Butter – Plus more for mushrooms if using
• 2-3 stalks Celery – Finely diced
• 1 large Bell Pepper – Finely diced
• 1-2 Onions – Finely diced
• 6-8 cloves Garlic – Microplaned or minced
• 1 can (314 grams) Chipotle In Adobo – Don’t worry if your can is slightly different. Just like with garlic, I measure chipotles with love not grams (but grams are a good baseline for the recipe. If you cannot find it in stores you can buy it here.
• 1 tsp Salt – or to taste
• 1/2 tsp MSG
• 1/2 tsp White Pepper
• 1 tbsp Paprika
• Black Pepper – Freshly cracked, to taste
• 750 ml Stock – I will leave the stock choice up to you. I used a beef and onion stock for this version, but chicken stock or mushroom stock will also work well.
• Parsley – optional, for garnish
• Mushrooms – optional, for garnish
• Gruyere – optional, for garnish
• 1 tsp (per bowl) Mustard Oil – optional, for garnish

Instructions

In a pan on medium heat add the butter, onion, bell pepper, celery and salt. Saute for 10-15 minutes. While the pan is cooking you can work on the squash.

Add the butternut squash pieces along with the minced or microplaned garlic. You can also add the MSG, white pepper, black pepper, and paprika at this time. Give everything a good mix and and saute for another 10-15 minutes.

If your pan is large enough you can do the next steps directly in the pan, however mine wasn’t so I moved everything to my dutch oven. At this point add in the stock and the chipotles in adobo. Give everything a good mix and cover with a lid. Bring everything to a boil and then reduce to the lowest simmer and let cook for one hour, or until the butternut pieces are extremely soft. While the soup is cooking you can work on the garnish (see below).

After one hour blitz everything together with a stick blender directly in the pot until smooth. This chipotle butternut squash soup naturally blends to a very fine liquid, however you could pass everything through a sieve if you wanted to get it even more uniform. I like this soup fairly thick and find that even without a sieve the only pieces that might not puree are the seeds from the chipotles.

I like to plate this squash soup with a mound of garnish right in the middle and a drizzle of mustard seed oil around that. As mentioned earlier the garnish is entirely optional so feel free to change it up, however I love the mix of of a mildly sweet and spicy soup with an herby-savory topping.

Garnish

To make the garnish add the mushrooms and butter (or butter/oil mix) to a pan and sauté until the mushrooms are quite fried. You can also add a little bit of salt to help draw out more moisture.

Remove from heat and mix in the chopped fresh parsley. Place a spoonful of the mushroom mix in the middle of the soup and grate over a little gruyere cheese, before finishing the soup with a drizzle of mustard seed oil.

* If you cannot find or do not want to use mustard seed oil another great option is pumpkin seed oil. Or if you are really in a pinch, a drizzle of high quality olive oil won’t go amiss.