Welcome to Flawed yet Functional! It’s fall, y’all! Let’s celebrate the beginning of a new season with a delicious spicy new soup recipe! If you need more recipe inspiration, take a look through the recipe archives. Check out this Easy Spicy Butternut Squash Soup with Chorizo! It’ll warm you up today!
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While I love summer immensely, I am so happy to welcome fall! What I love most about the fall and winter seasons is soup. My Paleo minus eggs diet does not always lend itself to easy leftovers, but soup is the quintessential leftover-friendly dish. It is made from the two main things I eat: meat and vegetables then simmered to perfection in delicious, gut-healing broth. It is that broth that does the magic of making an ordinary dish of meat and vegetables reheat into something even more delicious than the first time you ate it!
It is safe to say I love soup, and so does Dan, BUT butternut squash soup specifically has a sordid history in my marriage. I love each and every type of butternut squash soup. So as a young bride hoping to please her husband, I made a huge batch of creamy butternut squash soup. It was delicious! Fantastic, some might say.
At the end of the meal, I asked my husband to rate the dish. This was a practice in my household growing up to help my mom know what we liked or what we thought of a new dish. I’m not sure of the exact rating now, but it might have been zero. He definitely stated, “Could we please not eat this again?” Me being the loving wife that I am, I have simply taken his statement as a challenge. I am determined to find a butternut squash soup that he likes! In this recipe, I have found it! The key? It needs to be spicy!
Let’s dive into how to make this delicious spicy butternut squash soup!
One-Pot Butternut Squash Soup Tips
I really love soups to be one-pot recipes. Even if it means adding and removing ingredients from the pan, I would rather do that than dirty multiple cooking utensils. So read the instructions carefully because things are going to go in and out of the pot a couple of times.
- Brown the chorizo in some oil in the Dutch oven. You should fully cook the meat first so that you can add it to the soup at the end and not need any additional cook time.
- This is a very quick soup to make, but even so, you want to make sure to develop all the flavors that you can in that short amount of time. So don’t shortcut sauteing the onions and blooming the dried spices. The flavor will be so much better with those two steps given adequate time. It really only adds about 5 minutes!
- If you like chunks of vegetables in your soup then leave a cup or two of vegetables in the pan while you puree the rest of the soup. If chunks are not your jam, then puree it all!
- Don’t skip the toppings! One thing I have learned over the years of cooking is that soup is taken to another level when there are a few toppings to sprinkle on it. It looks beautiful and truly adds to the depth of flavor.
Toppings for Spicy Butternut Squash Soup
Every soup can be enhanced by a few thought-out toppings. Typically, butternut squash soup is a very mellow soup. The addition of chorizo turns the soup spicy so it is anything but bland, but it could still use embellishment, in my opinion.
I enhanced the soup even more by topping it with several different garnishment combinations. Every combination I tried enhanced the soup wonderfully. Give a couple of these a try!
- Crumbled bacon – can you ever go wrong with bacon?
- Diced fresh tomatoes
- Chopped cilantro
- Sliced green onions
- Fresh chives
- Sliced jalapenos, or any spicy pepper of choice!
- Pepitas
(toasted pumpkin seeds)
- Dairy-free plain yogurt
- Almond flour crackers
(toasted pumpkin seeds)
Those are the ones that we have tried and enjoyed. However, I am sure there are many more that would taste delicious on this soup!
Recipe Alternatives
Okay, let’s chat about options and alternatives. If you’ve got a butternut squash in your house, you can make the soup! Be brave and give it a try with what you have. Here are some options to get your brain moving…
Butternut Squash
I used fresh butternut squash from my garden when I developed this recipe. However, you can use the pre-cut cubes you find in the frozen section of your local grocery store. Since the soup is pureed, you should not notice any texture difference.
Chicken Broth
When I developed the recipe, I used chicken stock. However, you could use chicken stock, chicken broth, or chicken bone broth. I use all three interchangeably in my recipes.
For one of my testings of this recipe, I didn’t even have enough chicken stock. (Poor planning on my part!) I substituted plain water to make up the same volume as chicken broth in the recipe. It turned out just fine! Perhaps a bit weaker and less robust in flavor, but still simply delicious to eat!
Chorizo
Spicy Mexican-style chorizo is what this easy butternut squash soup was developed for, but there are alternatives if that level of spice is too much for you. Try Spanish chorizo instead of Mexican, it is not spicy like the Mexican variety. Another option is to use regular bulk sausage, a sage or breakfast variety would pair nicely with the butternut squash, and it would not be spicy at all!
Give spicy butternut squash soup with chorizo a try on your next chilly fall day! It makes a great dinner or a batch cook for lunches for the rest of the week. Embrace all the fall veggies this time of year and give this recipe a try! Even if some members of your family are on the fence about butternut squash, try it out because this truly is the best spicy butternut squash recipe. Even my husband who hates butternut squash loves the soup!
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Easy Spicy Butternut Squash Soup with Chorizo
Butternut squash makes a delightful soup perfect for all seasons, but this recipe is perfect for fall because it has spicy chorizo in it! Feeling chilly? Warm up with a hearty bowl of Spicy Butternut Squash Soup with Chorizo!
Ingredients
- 2-3 Tbsp. olive oil divided
- 2 lbs. chorizo Mexican style for spicy, Spanish for mild
- 1 large onion chopped
- 6 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tsp. ground cumin
- 1/2 tsp. dried thyme
- 2 tsp. sea salt more to taste
- fresh ground black pepper to taste
- 8 cups butternut squash peeled and cubed
- 4 cups chicken broth
- toppings of choice chives, green onions, tomatoes, pepitas, etc.
Instructions
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Peel the butternut squash then slice in half lengthwise (if your knife isn't long enough, cut crosswise first then lengthwise). Scoop out seeds and discard. Cube the butternut squash.
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Chop the onion and mince the garlic. Measure all spices and minced garlic into a small bowl for easy adding to the soup later. Set aside.
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Heat an 8-quart dutch oven over medium heat. Add 1-2 tablespoons of olive oil to the pan. Brown the chorizo until fully cooked. Remove cooked chorizo to a bowl and set aside.
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Add one tablespoon of olive oil to the dutch oven and saute the onions until softened and beginning to brown, about 5 minutes.
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Bloom the spices: add the garlic and dried spices to the hot onion mixture and cook for 30-45 seconds or until fragrant. This small amount of cook time will release a lot of flavor from the spices.
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Add the butternut squash and chicken broth to the pan. Bring to a boil then reduce heat to a simmer and cook until squash is soft, approximately 15 minutes.
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Add at least half (up to all) of the soup to a high powered blender and puree until smooth. If you like chunks of veggies in your soup, leave 1-2 cups of butternut squash in the dutch oven. Puree the remainder.
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Return the pureed soup to the pan, return the chorizo to the soup and warm over medium-low heat. Adjust the thickness of the soup with chicken broth. Taste and adjust seasoning with additional sea salt and pepper as needed.
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