fall eating: soup season

a few of my favorite recipes to welcome in fall.

As a devoted lover of soup, I have really tried to keep it in my meal rotation through the summer time. I can tell you confidently, soup is just not as good during the warmer months. There is something about a chill in the air and an early autumn evening that makes a bubbling pot on the stove feel just right.

Soup is also the perfect vehicle for autumn’s abundance. You start with seasonal veggies (squash, broccoli, carrots, sweet potatoes!) Add something brothy (vegetable stock, coconut milk, cream!) Top with any fresh herbs (cilantro, dill, parsley!) The trifecta of seasonal vegetables, creaminess and fresh herbs is genuinely everything I want in a meal. Best of all, soup is made for reheating and eating throughout the week. One of my favorite signs that autumn has arrived is the return of eating leftover soup for lunch. Here are a few of the soup recipes that I love the most. These are often in my meal rotation and particularly suited to fall produce.

My Ultimate Soup: Butternut Squash Soup

I don’t think I could love any soup more than butternut squash made with coconut milk. It’s creamy, warming and just the epitome of fall for me. Although I cook quite often, I’m still not the most confident in the kitchen so I almost always cook from a recipe. This is one of the very few things that I have made so many times that I can confidently whip up a pot of soup without following a specific recipe.

Here is my basic butternut squash soup recipe:

1. Peel, de-seed and roughly cube a whole butternut squash. Mince a clove (or 2 or 3, choose your adventure) of garlic and chop an onion.

2. In a soup pot or dutch oven, cook garlic and onion in olive oil until soft. Sprinkle in some salt and pepper as it’s cooking.

3. Add cubed butternut squash and any spices (red pepper flakes or ginger would both be good). Add another sprinkle of salt and cook for a minute or two.

4. Add stock to just cover the squash, cover the pot and simmer until squash is cooked through and easily pierced with a fork.

5. Turn off the heat. Blend the soup until smooth with an immersion blender or stand blender. Return to pot if needed.

6. Stir in a can of full-fat coconut milk. If the mixture is too cool for ideal soup-eating, turn the stove back on low to warm through.

7. Add a splash of vinegar (apple cider vinegar is great). Taste. Add additional salt and/or vinegar to taste.

8. Bonus step: If you’re a toppings person, drizzle with coconut cream, sprinkle on pumpkin seeds, or top with popcorn kernels.

A butternut squash soup side note: I recently came across this Curried Butternut Squash soup recipe from the Minimalist Baker and now I’m dying to try it!

Carrot Ginger Soup with Carrot Top-Herb Pesto

As proud CSA members, our household is lucky to find ourselves with an abundance of carrots each autumn. A wonderful solution to our carrot problem, this soup has become a standby over the last few years. No matter what we have on hand, big carrots, small carrots, carrots almost on the turn, you can throw them all in the pot and the resulting soup brings out their most delicious, slightly sweet carrot flavor.

I’ve also found the recipe to be incredibly flexible and forgiving. I have made the carrot top pesto and skipped it, either way is great. I have made up a batch with a generous quantity of carrots, and on the slim side when our supply runs low. You’ll see it calls for a cup of coconut milk, I have often dumped the entire can in to avoid waste. I have swapped the shallot nearly always for a red onion or a yellow onion. I have swapped the fresh ginger for a teaspoon of dried. I will say the key step is adding rice vinegar to taste, don’t be shy! A hint of acid is what makes a simple soup like this really shine.

Spiced Chickpea Stew with Coconut and Turmeric

Are you seeing a theme here? I love coconut milk! It makes soup so deeply flavorful. I also happen to love turmeric, so this recipe is an absolute favorite of mine. Chickpeas are stewed until they start breaking down and then gently mashed to even further break down into a thick, creamy soup. Adding greens in the last few minutes of cooking adds a really nice texture. I have tried using all of the suggested greens in the recipe (kale, swiss chard, collard greens), and even made this with beet tops recently. All delicious! Make sure to serve with a generous dollop of yogurt. I typically bring the container to the table to top up with additional yogurt throughout the bowl.

One simplification - I always skip the extra step of saving whole chickpeas for a garnish. All mushy chickpeas directly in the stew is just right for me.

Creamy Potato Leek Soup with Lots of Dill

My first coconut free soup recipe recommendation! Two of my other great loves are potatoes and dill, so this one is also an absolute favorite. Creamy, tangy from vinegar and a garnish of sour cream, and laced with lightly cooked greens. This is a soup that I love making through the fall and into the winter. As the recipe states, the dill is not optional!

A few other favorites:

• Chicken Tomatillo Chili - There is an out of this world recipe for tomatillo chili in my favorite cookbook, Huckle & Goose. In it, you stew down yellow onions, poblanos and a bunch of tomatillos, add chicken thighs, a can of beer, and slow cook in the oven for three full hours. At the end, you shred the chicken, add in white beans, and enjoy one of the most flavorful and comforting bowls I can imagine. I’m actually making this for the first time this fall tonight!

• Pozole - There are recipes for pozole blanco, verde and rojo in Esteban Castillo’s Chicano Eats*. All are really flavorful and absolutely worth the effort! I find hominy to be such a satisfying soup ingredient.

  *Chicano Eats is currently 15% off over on Bookshop in celebration of Latine Heritage Month with code LHM24.

• Tortilla Soup - My brother-in-law makes an incredible tortilla soup with veggies, chicken, tortillas, heat and tons of lime. He’s a very intuitive cook and tends to ad lib all his meals so pinning down an exact recipe from him has been tough. I’ll keep trying to recreate this one at home!

Do you have any favorite soups that welcome fall for you? What are you cooking up this season? My appreciation for soup (and ability to consume it) really knows no bounds, so I’d love to add a few more soup recipes to my rotation.

If you enjoyed this post, you’ll also enjoy:

• summer eating: all the tomatoes

• spring eating: CSA season

• spring eating: a week of meals

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