Make this butternut squash soup

It helps. I promise. Just make it.

The last time I shared a recipe was two years ago, and the only other recipe before that was nearly three years ago, because look: Emily Reese Nunn, Amanda Hesser, Annie Fenn, and Alison Roman do food writing so much better, so why even try? But if we’re going to be huddled in our kitchens for the next four years with our tusovki, fomenting revolution and fighting for bodily autonomy, the environment, democracy, and sanity itself, we’re gonna need soup. Lots of soup.

I have been craving butternut squash soup since the beginning of fall, but I am also frugal and do not like spending money on a tiny container of store-bought soup. So I purchased some butternut squash the other day and then looked up a bunch of soup recipes online only to realize I was missing this or that key ingredient for each one. Did I have fresh sage in my fridge, like so many recipes called for? No, tovarishch, I did not. Do I own an immersion blender? No, but present me is definitely pondering purchasing one for future me after having made this soup. Did I feel like roasting my squash before making the soup, like several recipes suggested? Nyet on that one, too. I needed my soup to be fast and simple and ready to slurp in half an hour, and I didn’t feel like cleaning an extra sheet pan on top of having to hand-wash the blender, because resistance is exhausting enough without creating extra mess. Would my soup have tasted better had I roasted the squash? I can honestly say the soup I ended up making out of whatever was in the fridge is the best soup I’ve ever tasted, so why even ponder hypotheticals?

The basic fact of soup is this: if you have an onion, a stalk of celery, butter, chicken stock, a dash of cream, salt, pepper, your vegetable of choice, and a basic blender, you can make a delicious soup no matter what. So even though I’m going to write out the recipe I made from the stuff in my fridge so you can make this soup, too, I want you to say to yourself, “I do not need to follow this recipe exactly. I can make soup out of whatever I have!”

Ingredients

• 3 lbs butternut squash, cubed (approximately 2 whole squashes or 2 containers of already cubed squash)

• 2 tablespoons of butter, but feel free to substitute olive oil if you’re trying to avoid butter for heart health. I get it. But I also love butter.

• 1 onion, roughly chopped

• 1 stalk of celery, roughly chopped, or 2-3 stalks if they’re small, which mine were.

• A sprinkling of thyme, sage, or whatever fresh herb(s) you happen to have around. I threw in some oldish thyme and what I think was some really, really old, wilted oregano, but I’m not sure. You could also use rosemary, according to many recipes I didn’t follow. I’m assuming you can also use the dried version of any of these, but I always prefer fresh herbs, if possible.

• 1 thumb-sized hunk of ginger. More, if you love ginger. Do you need to peel it? No, my friends, you do not. Just scrub it and throw it into the pot whole. See? Wasn’t that easy?

• 1 clove of garlic, halved lengthwise to remove the germ (the green sprouty thingy) inside it. More if you love garlic.

• 3 cups (24 ounces) of chicken stock, more or less. See my advice for how much stock to use below. You could also use vegetable stock.

• salt and pepper to taste

• 1/2 a cup of heavy cream, or more to taste. I suppose you could use whole milk, too, but then you’ll have to mix that whole milk with a dash of flour and butter in a saucepan first to boil and thicken it, and now you have another dirty pan to clean plus an extra step. Choose cream! It’s so good. Less fuss, less mess. You can also forgo the dairy altogether, if you’re lactose intolerant. I tasted mine, pre-cream. Delicious!

• 1 squirt of olive oil. I’m sorry I don’t know exactly how much I added, but I added it using one of those squirt bottles, and I just gave it one decent-sized squeeze.

Directions

1. Melt the butter in a dutch oven using medium to medium-high heat, depending on your stove.