Roasted butternut squash kale soup
Here’s another delicious detox-y soup (seriously it really is delicious, I promise). Now that I am travelling literally every week in true consultant style, I am finding myself getting pretty tired eating out all the time, and I just welcome the opportunity to have healthy home-cooked food. My favourite thing to do when I am travelling all the time is to make several big batches of recipes on a Sunday when I have a few hours of spare time, individually pack them all up, and then actually take containers of the food on my trips (it’s amazing what you can fit in a carry-on bag).
I like this soup because it features many of my favourite things all together – roasted butternut squash, fresh kale, and chickpeas. I also love the addition of fresh tomatoes and plan to incorporate this into more of my soups in the future. A lot of soups just add canned tomatoes, but having fresh roasted tomatoes in this soup makes the whole thing taste cleaner and very light. It’s filling but delightfully virtuous, which is a welcome relief around this time of year when everyone is starting to have a lot of holiday parties (and all you Americans are celebrating Thanksgiving of course). If I were you I would definitely make a big batch and freeze it for those days when you need a health boost!
Roasted butternut squash kale soup (adapted from Food Fitness Fresh Air)
Ingredients
- 1 large onion, chopped
- 6 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 medium butternut squash, cubed
- 2 medium tomatoes, diced
- 2 cups cauliflower, chopped
- 1 Tbsp. dried thyme
- Salt and pepper, to taste
- 2 packed cups chopped kale (I just used a bag – not really sure how much that is)
- 1 (15 oz) can chick peas
- 2 ½ tbsp. soy sauce
- 6 cups water, or low-sodium vegetable broth
Preheat oven to 200 C / 400 F. Place onion, garlic, butternut squash, and cauliflower in a large baking dish. Sprinkle with thyme, and season with salt. Drizzle with olive oil, to lightly coat. Bake about 30-45 minutes until everything is tender. Take it out around the 20 minute mark to see how they are coming and stir. I added my tomatoes in about 30 minutes in as I didn’t want the tomatoes to totally wither under the heat for that long. When they are all finished, remove from the oven.
Then, in a large pot, bring 6 cups of water or broth to a boil. Stir in the soy sauce, and add kale and chickpeas. Bring to a simmer. Cook for about 5 minutes until the kale is tender. Then remove from the heat or put on very very low heat and add the roasted vegetables (mine were totally done so I removed from the heat entirely). Stir it all up and add any more salt and pepper to taste.
Butternut squash, onion, and cauliflower ready to get roasted
Once they got tender, I added in the fresh tomatoes and let them all roast for about 5-10 more minutes
Lots of kale
Cooking the kale in the broth with the soy sauce – and roasted veggies ready to go into the pot (once the kale is all cooked down)
Finished product – so yummy
This is a perfect winter soup (or a great soup to eat for lunch during the summer if your office is very cold and air conditioned, like mine is). I froze it in individual portions in containers and found that after wrapping them in plastic bags I could even take it on my carry on bag for my weekly trips and have homemade lunches even while not working in Sydney. I love putting roasted vegetables in soup, and the little bit of soy sauce added great flavour to the broth as well. Kale and butternut squash go fabulously together and the tomato added a nice additional burst of colour to the bowl. This soup is just a delicious bowl of healthy goodness and I need more of this in my life right now (as opposed to take-out food or cookie dough…).
merrifood 