This roasted acorn squash and roasted chestnut soup is flavoured with warming cumin and coriander. It’s rich, velvety, and absolutely perfect for autumn. With so many pumpkins and squashes being in season, I wanted to make a recipe using some of them. So I opted for acorn squash, and paired it with a sweet nuttiness of roasted chestnuts. You can substitute the squash for butternut though, if preferred. I roasted the chestnuts like I usually do, in the air fryer. But if you prefer to you can use shop-bought cooked chestnuts instead
First Step; Roast the Squash
You’ll need;
- One acorn squash
- One tablespoon of oil
- A pinch of salt and black pepper
Method;
- Take one acorn squash and carefully cut it in half vertically
- Scoop out the seeds and stringy bits of the flesh and discard. Then cut the acorn squash into slices. My slices were roughly an inch or so thick
- Place the slices onto a lined baking tray, drizzle with oil and a pinch of salt and pepper
- Roast at 200°C for 25 minutes or until tender
- Finally, leave to cool before peeling and discarding the skin
Making the Soup
You’ll need;
- One tablespoon of oil
- One small onion, chopped, roughly 100g
- Three sticks of celery, chopped, roughly 125g
- One medium carrot, chopped, roughly 75g
- The flesh of one roasted acorn squash
- 90g cooked chestnut, see the post linked above in the introduction for how I roast them using an air fryer
- One litre of hot vegetable stock
- One teaspoon of both ground cumin and ground coriander
- Salt and black pepper to taste
Method;
- Begin by heating the oil in a large saucepan over a medium heat. Once it’s warmed up, add in the onion, celery and carrot
- Give the vegetables ten minutes to begin to soften, stirring every now and then
- Next add in the roasted acorn squash and stir it through the vegetables. Then pour over the stock, spices and add the chestnuts. Pop a lid on the saucepan and leave to simmer for ten minutes
- Add salt and pepper if it’s needed, then blend the soup until it’s smooth
- Finally spoon into bowls and serve
This is such a lovely combination of the pumpkin flavour from the squash and sweet nuttiness from the chestnuts. It also has a creamy mouth feel despite being completely dairy-free
