How to Magically Turn a Box of Soup into a Dinner Delicious

Has the first day of school always been this exhausting?  Wow.

Kidzilla made it through the first day of her new pre-K class with flying colors, despite her initial nervousness.  Zilla loves school.  Fab Hub and I made it through Zilla’s first day of pre-K and New Life Phase in one piece with only one minor breakdown on my part.  Not bad.

Dinner needed to be simple.

First, because everyone was tired.  Second, because we haven’t quite made it to the grocery store yet this week.  So I turned once again to the wisdom of my Art of Simple Food cookbook and pulled something together with a couple of staple pantry items and some leftovers.

Honestly, the book tells the truth – keep these kinds of things around and dinner is a no-brainer.

We had a box of butternut squash soup in the cupboard.  Nothing fancy and, I am ashamed to say, not my own homemade recipe (which is completely easy as well).  But sometimes having a box of soup or a jar of fake spaghetti sauce on hand is just what a girl needs.  Plus, the soup boasted a looming expiration date, so it became the necessary star of the show.

The box is in the trash, but I think it was a standard 24 ounce box of soup.  Heated that up on the stove.  I added a couple tablespoons of light cream and about two tablespoons of butter to the pot, too, just to give that plain soup a bit more gusto.  The particular brand we had was pretty bland.  Does it need the cream and butter added to the soup?  Nooo…but that’s a call to make based on your own preferences.  I wanted a little bit of that comfort food taste and feel without going crazy.

While the soup warmed, I heated some grapeseed oil and cooked one chicken sausage from our local farmers’ market chicken guy in a skillet.  I think the sausage was about half a pound.  The flavor combo was parsley, garlic, wine, lemon – one of our favorites.  Instead of using the sausage as-is, though, I emptied the meat from the casing and just quick chopped it into pseudo meatballs with my wooden spoon.

Placed a few of those in the bottom of each soup bowl, and added soup over top.

We had leftover tortilla chips on hand.  Cracked a few of those into the soup surrounding the sausage.

We had the very end of the ricotta salata cheese from a few nights ago hanging out in the fridge waiting for an invitation.  Shredded that over top of the sausage, soup, and chips.

Just for a little color variation, sprinkled some parsley on top.  Really, any nice green herb you think matches would be fine.  Added a few turns of fresh ground black pepper; no salt – the tortilla chips covered that perfectly.  And then the final touch – just to make it kind of special.  As I returned my parsley flakes to the cupboard (yup, used dried today), my eye caught sight of my bottle of cooking sherry.  Drizzled about a tablespoon of that on top of the two grownup plates.

Dinner is served…

Nothing complicated, nothing time-consuming, everything good.  Even better?  You can use pretty much any soup, sub in some crusty bread for the chips, change up the cheese…the possibilities are endless. Try tomato soup, leftover garlic bread toast, and grated (not the green can stuff) parmesan?  Asparagus soup, pumpernickel bread croutons, and corn?  We have often used roasted red pepper soup with fresh salsa, tortilla chips, and sour cream.  It’s the process here, not really the specific recipe, if you can even call it that.  If you have tiny soup pasta around, you could use some of those instead of tortillas or bread.  Rice could work, especially some already-cooked leftover rice.  I could see a wild rice blend or a Tex-mati in the butternut squash soup.

Now, should you find yourself feeling ambitious or yearning for the warmth of homemade soup and the smell of a kitchen at work on a fall afternoon, go for the homemade butternut squash soup when those babies are in season. Fantastic!

Here is our favorite recipe…I have used it for several years and I believe it originally came from Redbook.

Butternut Squash Soup

You will need:

1 medium (2 ¼ pound ) butternut squash

1 small onion (sliced)

2 14.5 ounce cans chicken broth

2 Tbs butter (or margarine)

1/8 tsp pepper

1 pinch ground nutmeg

unsweetened whipping cream

What to Do:

1. Cut squash in half and remove seeds.  Peel squash and cut into half-inch cubes OR buy the equivalent of pre-cut squash from your supermarket.  Sure, you’ll pay a bit more, but it’s a choice you can make, depending on your preference.
2. Heat oven to 425 degrees F.  Layer squash and onion in shallow 8” glass casserole.  Pour one can broth over vegetables, then dot with butter and sprinkle with pepper and nutmeg.  Cover with foil and bake until tender, about 40 minutes.  Cool slightly.
3. Purée vegetables and liquid in blender, in batches if necessary, until smooth.  In saucepan, combine pureed squash and remaining broth.  Bring to a boil.  Serve topped with a little whipped cream and a sprinkle of nutmeg.

This will yield about six to seven cups of soup.

Notes:

Since the onion type is non-specific, my guess is use anything you like.  Generally we have used white cooking onions, but our favorite is shallots.  Just use the equivalent amount to what’s listed.

The whipping cream would be terrific, no doubt, but we don’t often serve that way.  Sour cream also works, depending on your taste.

The blender part is a bit tedious.  Have I dumped almost all of it into my food processor?  Yes, I have.  Would I stick an immersion blender right in the pot and take care of business that way?  Yes, I would.  (Never have, though, so I can’t guarantee success on that method.)

You can change this up with various herbs, skip the nutmeg, or add a little heavy or light cream to the soup in the pot.  Rosemary often works very nicely on this one.  I usually choose from the list of things you’d use for Thanksgiving recipes.

Happy simple souping!