Roasted Butternut & Chorizo Soup
The essence of butternut squash: rustic, robust and deeply flavourful –
ideal for cosy winter evenings with favourite family members, a lively fire in
the hearth and happy reminiscing about the olden days.
My dad was a soup and barbeque man. Truly heaven would’ve been a place
on earth for him if he could barbeque soup. Any soup. However, soup is not
exactly my ‘thing’, but this one reminds me of him and I prepare it two or
three times a year. The recipe yields more than enough to allow freezing a portion
or two for later use. Usually, a tub of this floats around somewhere in my deep
freezer for those odd evenings when I come home dead tired and not in the mood
for the kitchen.
Roasting concentrates the flavour and elevates the sweetness of the
butternut. Pan fried, crispy chorizo provides a savoury, smoky background. Roasted
onions are in a class of their own and bring a touch of bitterness to offset
the overwhelming essence of butternut squash. All in all? An ensemble cast.
The recipe may appear daunting, but is simple when conducted at a leisurely
pace on a Saturday afternoon.
ROASTED BUTTERNUT & CHORIZO SOUP
– PRINT RECIPE –
Recipe yields:
|
Preparation time:
|
Difficulty level:
|
10 – 12 Portions / ± 2½L
|
± 3 – 4 hours
|
Easy & leisurely
|
Special Equipment Required:
1
x Kitchen mandoline, if available
Several
sheet or Swiss roll pans
Wire
racks to fit in the sheet or Swiss roll pans
Baking
paper
Food
processor
Ingredients:
Large butternut squash, peeled
and cut into 25mm thick rounds
|
1 / ± 2.3Kg
|
Dried oregano
|
7.5ml
|
Large onions, peeled &
cut into 5 – 6 mm thick intact rounds with the mandoline slicer
|
2
|
Sunflower oil
|
80ml
|
Chorizo sausage, sliced on
the diagonal
|
1 / ± 220g
|
Bay leaves
|
5
|
Hot vegetable stock
|
1 L
|
Hot water
|
± 1L
|
Sour cream
|
60ml
|
Ground coriander, pan
roasted until fragrant
|
7.5ml
|
Dijon style mustard
|
5ml
|
Lemon peel, finely grated
|
5ml
|
Fine white pepper
|
1.2ml
|
Salt
|
± 7.5ml
|
Method:
1. Reserve 15ml of the
sunflower oil to one side. Cut the butternut rounds into quarters or thick
batons. Transfer to a large bowl and add the oregano and a healthy dollop of
sunflower oil. Mix thoroughly to coat each piece of squash with a thin film of
oil and some oregano.
2. Coat the wire racks with
some oil as well. Place the racks in the sheet or Swiss roll pans. Arrange the
butternut pieces on the wire racks. Leave approximately 3mm – 5mm space between
each piece to allow good air circulation inside the oven.
3. Arrange the pans well
apart in your oven and roast for 40 – 45 minutes in a pre-heated convection oven
at 165°C (330 deg. Fahrenheit) or 50 – 60 minutes at 180°C (355 deg.
Fahrenheit) in a normal, static oven. Use the handle of a long wooden spoon to
keep the oven door slightly ajar for the first 15 minutes to allow excess
moisture to escape. Turn the pans at 30 minutes for even roasting. Do not crowd
or overload the oven. Rather roast the squash in two batches if your oven is on
the smallish side.
4. The butternut pieces will brown in irregular patches on the
flat surfaces and the edges will start to caramelize when ready. Be careful not
to burn the vegetables. Remove from the oven and allow to cool until warm to
the touch. Transfer to a large bowl.
5. Place a layer of baking
paper in two sheet or Swiss roll pans. Apply a thin layer of oil. Arrange the
rounds of onion on the pans and paint each round completely with the initially
reserved oil. The onions need to be well oiled as they char and burn easily in
the oven. Roast the onions, with the pans well apart, for 25 – 35 minutes in a
pre-heated convection oven at 165°C (330 deg. Fahrenheit) or 30 – 35 minutes at
180°C (355 deg. Fahrenheit) in a normal, static oven. The onions must be
inspected frequently. Turn the pans at 15 minutes for even roasting.
6. Remove the roasted onions from the oven and allow to cool
until warm to the touch. Discard from each round any outer rings of onion that
appear to be charred. Transfer the remaining roasted onion rounds to the bowl
with roasted butternut.
7. Sauté the chorizo slices slowly
along with the bay leaves in an un-oiled pan over medium to low heat until
crispy and nicely browned. The chorizo will throw a lot of fat. Transfer the
slices to a double layer of kitchen paper towels. Pat dry with extra paper. Dice
the slices into pea sized pieces and reserve to one side. Discard the bay
leaves.
8. Process the roasted
butternut and onions batch wise in the food processor into a chunky puree. Add
±250ml hot vegetable stock to each batch to aid the processing process as the roasted
vegetables will not contain enough moisture to form a puree on their own.
Transfer the batches of puree to a clean mixing bowl.
9. Add the diced chorizo, sour
cream, coriander, mustard, lemon peel and white pepper to the vegetable puree.
Do not add the salt. Add any remaining vegetable stock. Mix thoroughly and add hot
water batch wise until a preferred consistency is achieved. Add the salt in
small portions, mixing well and tasting between each addition, until a sufficient
level of saltiness is achieved.
10. Transfer the soup to a suitable serving container and reheat in
a microwave or low oven before serving. Serve with generous quantities of brown
bread toast and butter, or herbed croutons.
11.
Bask (not too obviously, mind you) in the adulation of your fellow
diners.
Comments:
¨ It is important for the vegetables to be cut to even
thicknesses. This will ensure uniform cooking and roasting.
¨ The vegetables need to roast, not bake, thus the requirement
for well spaced pans in the volume of the oven. Individual pieces of vegetable
on the pans should not to touch one another either.
¨ The roasting process results in the desirable caramelization
(the well known Maillard reaction) of
the sugars, carbohydrates and amino acids on the cut surfaces of the vegetables,
yielding the characteristic ‘roasted’ taste, browned colour and concentrated
flavour particular to each vegetable. However, roasting should be done with
care as allowing it to proceed too far leads to pyrolysis and the unpleasant bitterness and charring
associated with burnt foodstuffs.
¨ The onions can be sautéed in a pan until nicely caramelized
if the roasting process seems too much trouble. ‘Deglaze’ the hot pan with a
little of the hot vegetable stock to collect all the goodness of the caramelized
onions.
© RS Young, 2017
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Note:
Post
updated on 2024.02.25 to include:
1.
The updated Recipe for downloading as a PDF file, and
2.
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