Butternut Bisque - Food Wishes

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with butternut bisque that's right i'm going to show you what i consider one of the ultimate winter special occasion first course soups but also one of the ultimate winter weeknight not special occasion soups which i guess depends on whether you go with the fancy garnish and also exactly how we prep our squash but we'll get to that the point is this is going to work for both occasions so with that let's go ahead and get started and we'll begin this like almost all great soups begin with a nice big chunk of butter that we're going to melt over medium-low heat and then to that we're going to add one diced onion along with a nice big pinch of salt and what we'll do is let this cook stirring occasionally until those onions really soften up and turn translucent and almost start to melt into the butter and we're going to take our time which is why we have this on medium low okay we don't necessarily want to get color on these onions we just want them to slowly sweeten and soften which is probably going to take a good 10 or 15 minutes and what we'll do while we're waiting is prep our butternut squash and there it is your standard soup size approximately two pound butternut squash and what we'll do to prep this is cut off both ends although feel free to not take so much off and then what we'll do is cut halfway in right in the center cutting down and all the way through and then we'll turn the squash and put the knife back into the incision and finish the cut through the other end thereby splitting the squash pretty much in half or at least close enough for youtube and then one split let's go ahead and take a spoon and remove the seeds and if you want once all those seeds are scraped out you can actually separate those from all that sticky slimy fibrous stuff and then roast them and eat them or you can do what i do which is scrape them up and throw them right in the garbage and then what we'll do once our squash has been split and seeded is take a peeler and remove all the skin and by the way the reason we want to do this after we've cut our squash in half is because the peel butter in our squash is extremely extremely slippery and significantly more dangerous to cut so i find this post split peeling method much safer and then what we'll do once this is peeled is simply cut it up into chunks about the size you see here and then once this is cut up we have a big decision to make are we going to roast this squash in the oven before adding it to our onions or are we going to add it as is and for me i based the decision on how i'm going to use the soup okay if i'm going to serve it for a main course then i usually roast the squash because that's going to produce a sweeter richer product but here since i'm going to serve this as a first course before a relatively heavy meal i'm not going to roast it and add it as is which is going to produce something lighter and brighter a lover not a fighter because while he still wants something very tasty i don't want anything too too sweet and filling and i'll discuss this issue further on the blog but for this version we're going to use it raw and once that's set we'll go back and check our onions which by now should be nice and soft and look a little something like this and then what we'll do at this point is raise our heat to medium high and add our secret ingredient a spoon of tomato paste and we'll go ahead and stir that in and we're going to cook that for about two minutes or so just until it starts to caramelize and turn brown and not only is this going to add to the savoriness of the soup but the acidity from that tomato is really going to work nicely with the squash okay so like i said we'll cook that for a couple minutes until it starts to brown up and looks like this at which point we can go ahead and toss in our squash along with one quart of chicken broth or if you're one of those vegetarians i've heard of you could certainly go with water or vegetable stock whatever that is and we'll give that a stir and then what we'll do while we're waiting for this to come up to a simmer is add some more salt as well as a shake of cayenne and as soon as that comes up to a simmer on medium-high we'll reduce it to medium-low and simply simmer this for about a half hour or so or until those chunks of squash are very very very tender not sorta tender really tender and of course the way you're going to tell is by testing them with a fork and you'll know you'll be like wow these are tender if you're not sure let it keep simmering but once we are sure we'll reduce our heat to low and then proceed to blend this until completely smooth and for that these stick blenders are very convenient although feel free to use your traditional blender i would just do it in a couple batches so you don't burn yourself and we'll want to take our time here and make sure this is absolutely smooth since i'm not going to strain this although you could but anyway we're going to work that over with our blender until 100 chunk free at which point we can add our heavy cream if we're using which we are and by the way creme fresh would also work here and maybe even better and then as soon as that cream heats through and the soup's back up to temperature we'll go ahead and give it a taste and possibly adjust with a couple things we're probably almost always going to need some more salt so i'm going to go ahead and stir a little more of that in and then if you want and i almost always do i like to add about a tablespoon or two of maple syrup all right to up that sweetness level just a hair but not too much just a touch because as i discussed and the same reason i'm not roasting the squash i don't want this to be too sweet and filling so we're just going to stir in a little bit to balance the flavors and believe it or not that's it we'll give that one last taste and assuming it's nice and hot and seasoned exactly how we want this incredibly easy soup is done and ready to serve up and as hopefully you can see this is not too thick okay for first course that's exactly the texture i want and if you think yours is too thick just stir in a little more broth that's just you cooking but this was the exact viscosity i wanted so i went ahead and served it up and if there's a more beautiful orange color in the universe i would really look forward to seeing that because to me this is just stunning i mean there's no way to look at that color and not be happy go ahead try it and then because this is going to be a first course at that special occasion dinner i'm going to swirl in a little bit of fresh cream and then top that with some freshly snipped chives as well as a few jewels of pomegranate to help give it that extra festive holiday special occasion look and that's it what we're calling butternut bisque is done so let me go ahead and grab a spoon and dig in and see how we did and even though we didn't roast and caramelize the squash it still has that beautiful earthy starchy slightly sweet flavor we know and love accentuated by that little bit of maple syrup we added but by not roasting we have something that's a little more vegetable right a little lighter a little less filling which is going to please but not satisfy the palette because as i mentioned if we're doing this as a first course we have many more courses to come but if you do want something more substantial by all means roast the squash and then you could garnish with things like crispy bacon or diced ham or even some sliced sausage or whatever as usual those pairings would be up to you you are after all the carlton fisk of your butternut bisque is it bad i'm already thinking about spring training but anyway for this non-roasted lighter version this garnish worked beautifully even though i was having trouble here getting some pomegranate on the spoon all right there we go which in addition to looking great really works great texturally and flavor wise since those little bursts of sweet tart flavor kind of resets the palette but anyway that's it my take on butternut bisque whether you are going to serve this as a fancy first course for your holiday feast or just on some cold dreary weeknight when you're in serious need of some liquid love either way i really do hope you give this a try soon so head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and as always enjoy [Music] you

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 361,089

Keywords: Butternut, Bisque, soup, squash, winter, first course, appetizer, easy', healthy, chef, john, food, wishes, cooking, recipes, recipe, holiday

Id: 43VW2QK4-vc

Length: 8min 22sec (502 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 13 2017