This recipe is one of our favorite ways to utilize squash. The ingredients are simple, the method is easy to adapt to your tastes and creativity, and once you get a feel for how we bring this whole thing together, a world of possibilities opens up. Plus it’s a great excuse to make grilled cheese sandwiches. It’s easy to make vegetarian, vegan, and gluten free. One pot, one baking tray, and ~15 minutes of active cooking time.
So here’s the plan, and it’s very simple: basically, well-caramelized onion forms the foundation, then we’re going to take a bunch of veggies, roast them in the oven, blend them with some stock in a pot, and add a splash of cream. The depth of flavor comes with trusting the ever-increasing deliciousness of browning roasted veggies.
Recipe: Roasted Fall Vegetable Bisque
Ingredients:
1 Onion (sliced, for caramelizing)
2T+ Butter for caramelizing said onions
A bunch of your favorite woody herbs - rosemary and thyme are great, as is sage
4 to 5 Pounds of squash, any winter squash will do, and in Version 2, you’ll see any root veg like beets, carrots, parsnips work great too! In the recipe pictured, we used:
4 Acorn squashes (we used 2 acorn and 2 carnival) and ½ pound peeled and cubed butternut squash**
4-5 Unpeeled garlic cloves
6-8 Cups vegetable stock (your favorite stock will work great)
Olive oil for coating the roasting veg
Salt and pepper to taste
Splash of cream to taste
Special equipment - immersion blender (recommended, but not required, read through directions below)
**Virtually any roast-able fall veggie works: parsnips, carrots, turnips, beets, squashes, pumpkin, potatoes, sweet potatoes, you get the idea.
Directions
Getting the method down is the key to opening up all the possibilities of this recipe. If you’re using acorn squash, slice into even wedges, peel on (it comes off easily after roasting). If it’s butternut squash, peel and cube it. Root veg needs to be cubed or chunked, we want everything to be roughly the same size so it cooks in the same amount of time. Take all that veg and your garlic cloves, and toss in oil, salt, and pepper. Spread everything out on a roasting tray. Single layer only to make sure they brown. Roast at 375, after 30 minutes shake them around and check to make sure nothing’s sticking. They’ll need another 15-30 minutes, and the browner they get, the sweeter and more flavorful the final product will be. Keep an eye on the garlic, it should get soft and spreadable but don’t let it burn.
This is the halfway point after our first flip. Remember, COLOR = FLAVOR!
While that’s in the oven it’s time to get those onions caramelizing. Set your stove to medium-low, and get your soup/stock pot on there. Slice the onion, add it to the pot with the woody herbs (we prefer thyme), a knob of butter, and a pinch of salt. Lid on until they’re softened and translucent. I don’t know why recipes say to caramelize onions for 5-10 minutes. It’s a lie, It can’t be done. It takes at least 30 minutes. But it’s not hard and it’s not work, and the veggies have to roast anyway. Once the onions have softened, keep the lid off and the stove on medium-low. Every 10 or so minutes after they’ve gone translucent, check back in on them and stir them around to make sure they’re not scorching or burning. If they’re looking too dry and (sticking to the bottom) before about the 20 - 30 minute mark, your stove is too hot. Lower it, add another knob of butter or splash of water to loosen them, and keep going. The longer you can take them, the sweeter, richer, and rounder the flavor will be. If they’re starting to disintegrate into something like a caramel-colored paste, you’re doing it right.
Patience is key to caramelizing. These look good, but they’re only halfway there! Keep going!
Again, the longer and deeper you let the roasting veg and caramelizing onions go, the better the final product will be. It’ll be difficult, because they’ll just smell so good. But your patience will be rewarded! When the onions are finished caramelizing (around the time the veggies are done roasting) add your stock to the pot unless you don’t have an immersion blender, blender, or food processor. Instead add all the roasted veg into the pot first, and go at it with a potato masher until it’s smooth, while off the heat. Then add your stock. Veggie stock to keep it vegetarian/vegan, but any stock works. We used good gelatinous homemade chicken stock. Start with 4-6 cups of stock, make sure to scrape around the bottom to get any bits of onion off the bottom and into that liquid. Turn the heat up to medium and bring to a simmer. Add the roasted veg to the pot - if you used acorn/carnival squash like we did, just mush the flesh off the skin right into the pot, or scrape it off with a spoon if you’re not a savage. You should be able to just squeeze the garlic cloves right out of their skins now. Into the pot.
Stock is in! You can see all the caramelized bits of squash and onion, and thyme too. We prefer our soup on the thicker side, but how much you add will also depend on the residual water content of the veggies you choose to roast up. And although it’s thick, the cream you may or may not (may) add at the end will adjust the consistency.
The home stretch! Once it comes back up to a simmer, blend it all nice and smooth with an immersion blender like we did, or ladle it into a blender or food processor if that’s what you got. Add more stock to thin it to your preferred consistency. Add a splash of cream, check for salt and pepper (if you’ve been seasoning as you go it should be pretty close), and you’re done!
Quick pass with the immersion blender - ours isn’t even a fancy one - and you’re left with silky smooth bisque! Although there’s one thing missing…
Cream! You know, I guess it’s technically optional, but who are we kidding, really?
Serving and Options
This is my favorite part. I think of the method as more of a vegetable soup platform that you can take in all kinds of directions. First, let’s keep it vegan.
Vegetable or coconut oil for frying, coconut cream to finish. Those coconut additions make me think of curries, Thai or Indian. Maybe add a teaspoon of curry powder, or cumin and turmeric to the veg before roasting while you’re tossing them in oil. And a sprinkle of mustard seeds and a curry leaf while you’re caramelizing the onions instead of thyme. Top with some crispy fried shallots.
Toss the veg with some chili powder before roasting, crisp up some chorizo for topping, and add a dollop of black beans, sour cream, chives or green onions, cotija, shredded jack, and break out the tortilla chips.
Crisp up something to sprinkle on top. Sausage bits, pancetta, bacon, croutons, onions, pine nuts, frico - any textural counterpoint that packs a punch of flavor.
What if those onions are caramelized with some schmaltz? Or leftover bacon grease? Or the veg tossed in those before roasting?
Serving with great toast points is an option too. But we definitely think this bisque calls for grilled cheese. The bisque has some big, round, roasty-sweet flavors. To me, a great foil would be the tartness or nuttiness of something like swiss or gruyere, or emmentaler. We had a bag of shredded gruyere/swiss blend, so I made a sourdough grilled cheese with that. I like slicing the grilled cheese into fingers for improved dunkability.
I went with a shredded swiss/gruyere frico in a mug for easy grilled cheese finger dipping. Plus, gratuitous stretchy cheese shot.