Soup Nazi - Part Two

I’m going to be perfectly honest with you; this has been a killer winter for me! I swear that there was not a day in January that I didn’t shovel either at work or home and I have been very diligent in keeping to my New Years resolution of working out five days a week. Consequently I have been very lax in my blogging due to the fact that I am tired at the end of the day. But that doesn’t mean that I have not been cooking; actually I have become a huge fan of homemade soup!

In an earlier post I gave you my recipe for homemade tomato soup; which until this year I had never eaten. I know, I know how could I have made it thirty-some-odd years without eating tomato soup; well it can be blamed on my Aunt who forced me to eat tomatoes when she babysat the three year old me while my parents were in Hawaii. It has taken me a long time to get over that childhood scar, but I am glad to report that I will eat tomatoes anytime they are fed to me.

This time I want to talk about my favorite kitchen appliance, my fabulous immersion blender! Two years ago my sister gave me this miracle gadget for Christmas and I am constantly looking for an excuse to blend something. FYI do not use it to whip cream cheese because the stuff will end up all over your kitchen! This gadget eliminates transferring your soups into a standing blender and creating a rather big mess, just put the thing in the pot and vrrrrr away!

My second favorite soup to make this year has been a Butternut Squash Soup. Begin by sautéing four diced up thick cut strips of bacon in the bottom of your soup pot, once cooked remove and reserve the drippings to cook the rest of the soup in. Now get out your big knife and chop up one onion, pear, leak and potato; dump all of this in a large soup pot with salt and pepper. If you are feeling ambitious you can peal and chop up a butternut squash but I am perfectly content to use the frozen diced stuff that they sell in the grocery store. Add this to the pot and cook everything until soft, about ten to fifteen minutes. (I don’t usually defrost the squash so it takes a little longer.) Once everything is soft add about three cups of chicken broth and one cup of skim milk and bring the soup to a gentle boil. When I made this last week I brought the soup up to a boil too fast and it ended up breaking; this is not a huge problem because you will be blending it so know one will know. Now comes the fun part, put your immersion blender in the pot and blend away until everything has been pulverized. Once smooth add about one cup of shredded cheddar cheese and stir until melted, add the bacon bits that you made into the soup and enjoy.

You can easily make this a vegetarian soup by omitting the bacon and using vegetable stock, but personally I enjoy the bacon in it. Of course I enjoy bacon in everything, but we will talk about that in a later post. Oh yeah and if the Pope asks you, the bacon in this soup was used purely for season; I did not eat meat on Ash Wednesday.


Butternut Squash Soup
4 slices thick cut bacon, diced
1 med onion, diced
1 pear, diced, skin on
1 lg potato, pealed & diced
1 leak, white and light green parts only
1 ½ cups butternut squash, frozen & diced
3 cups chicken broth
1 cup skim milk
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded

Sauté the bacon until crisp; remove from pot reserving the drippings. Add all the vegetables, season with salt and pepper and sauté until soft. Add the liquids and bring up to a gentle boil slowly. Blend the soup either with an immersion blender or in a standing one until smooth. Add the cheese, stir till melted, add the bacon back in and serve.