Roasted butternut squash and cannellini bean soup
Aug
LUNCH/DINNER
Roasted butternut squash and cannellini bean soup
- 4 tbsp good quality olive oil
- 3 fat garlic cloves
- 1.5 medium sweet potatoes)
- 1.5l ight chicken /vegetable stock or water
- 1.5 medium red onions
- 1.5 medium parsnips
- 1 can cooked cannellini beans
- 7 sage leaves (optional)
- black pepper and salt (optional)
- 190ml low fat yogurt (optional)
- 2.5 large carrots
- 1 large butternut squash
Tips/Notes
Tips/NotesBASE FOR OTHER RECIPIES
Put 2-4 chicken legs on top of the root vegetables and roast together. Serve the chicken with some roasted root vegetables and a baby spinach salad.
For a vegetarian option: make a salad with baby spinach, toasted pine nuts, feta or some crumbly goat’s cheese and some roasted root vegetables.
…and you could add some of the roasted garlic to the salad dressing
METHOD
1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Scrub well the squash, carrots, parsnips and sweet potatoes. Top and tail carrots and parsnips and peel the onions.
2. Cut the butternut squash in 3 cm slices and the rest of the vegetables in (approx) 3 cm cubes. Put the squash in a roasting tin and the rest of the vegetable in another. Add whole garlic cloves, chopped sage leaves, olive oil and pepper and mix well with your hands to coat the vegetables.
3. Roast in the oven for 45min to 1hr checking and shaking the tin once or twice. While the veggies are in the oven heat up stock or water. Once vegetables are soft and slightly caramelized remove from the oven, scrape the squash flesh away from the skin, squeeze garlic cloves out of their skins and spoon into a large bowl with any roasting juices, add beans and half the stock and whizz with a hand-held blender. Alternatively, put the roasted vegetables and beans into the bowl of a food processor or blender and add enough stock to blend (you may have to do this in batches to accommodate all vegetables and transfer to a larger bowl to mix). Once you have a smooth consistency (you may need more or less stock depending on the vegetables and your taste) stir in the yogurt (if using it) and you are ready to serve it.
VARIANTS
You can use a different combination of root vegetables: Jerusalem artichokes, pumpkin, etc. Same goes for the beans, as long as they are white so you don’t spoil the orangey colour of the soup!
Adding dairy increases the soup’s protein content to 15% of our daily need. Yogurt is the best option as it moderately increases calorie content, saturated fat but in return provides more calcium. A spoonful of cheese increases saturated fat to nearly a quarter of an adult’s daily recommended intake and adds more salt with the same amount of calcium per portion.
You may substitute the sage leaves with fresh basil leaves added just before blending the soup or once blended just add some torn leaves as garnish.