Roasted Butternut Squash and Vegetable Soup (version 1)

Ah.... autumn... in the Pacific Northwest... Soup weather... with the addition of fresh produce from the local farmers makes it must better! Relocating to Washington was a GREAT idea!

So, I was gifted with a butternut squash the other day... I've never eaten butternut squash before... I did a bit of research on how to turn it into soup... I came across a recipe for Roasted Butternut Squash soup. I used it for inspiration, taking some of the comments into consideration... Here is my first version of the soup:

Ingredients:
1 Butternut Squash
1 Granny Smith Apple
1 Medium Yellow Onion
2 Carrots
3 Parsnips
Olive Oil
2 quarts Chicken Broth
3 cloves Garlic
Salt, Pepper, All Purpose Seasoning
Hashbrown Potatoes
(an afterthought - Pumpkin Pie Spice)

Preheat the oven to 425 degrees. Cut the squash in half and scoop out the seeds. Cut the apple into quarters and cut out the core. Cut the onion into eighths (in half, in half, in half). Peel and chop the carrots and parsnips into large pieces. Add all items to a baking dish and drizzle with olive oil and season with salt and pepper.

Roast the vegetables for 50 minutes.

Transfer the roasted vegetables to the pot, scooping the squash from the skins with a spoon.

Pour some of the chicken broth into the roasting pan to deglaze it a bit (scrape up the brown bits).

Pour the liquid from the baking dish into the pot and add the rest of the chicken broth. Sprinkle on about a teaspoon or two of the all purpose seasoning (feel free to use what you want, I used my go-to seasoning). Throw in the garlic cloves whole at this point.

Heat over Medium heat to simmer for a while (I didn't time it - some of the vegetables didn't cook all the way through in the oven, so I cooked it a while until everything was tender). Add a bag of (non-frozen) hashbrowns.

Cook a while longer, then blend the contents of the pot (I used my immersion blender).

Add more salt and pepper to taste. As an afterthought, I sprinkled a bit of Pumpkin Pie Spice to it at this point as well.

I added the hashbrowns to the mix in place of cream from the original recipe. It makes a nice thick soup when blended but doesn't have the added fat and lactose that the heavy cream does.

Next time, I'll experiment with the roasting process so the apple doesn't cook too quickly and the squash is easier to deal with.