Our Best Butternut Squash Soup

The week after the last Beaufort Thanksgiving, and the world continues, which feels both reassuring and absurd. The library system runs. The patrons come. The books circulate. The adult literacy students practice their sentences. Bernice can now read a paragraph — a full paragraph, eighteen words, about a dog and a ball — and the pride on her face when she reads it aloud is the most important thing I will see this month, possibly this year.

I am processing the Thanksgiving visit the way I process everything: slowly, thoroughly, in the kitchen. I have been cooking Mama's recipes all week — not because we need the food but because the cooking is a way of holding the Beaufort kitchen in my hands, of keeping the connection alive while the physical space is still hers. Monday: she-crab soup. Tuesday: cornbread. Wednesday: sweet potato pie. Thursday: Hoppin' John. Each dish a letter in a love letter I am writing to a kitchen that will soon be empty.

Robert noticed. He came home Tuesday to find me making the third Mama recipe of the week and said, "You're grieving." I said, "I'm cooking." He said, "Same thing." He was right, and the rightness of it — the fact that this man who once failed to see me now sees me so clearly — was itself a kind of comfort.

James is three weeks from the College of Charleston decision. The anxiety has plateaued into a steady hum, the kind that becomes background noise if you let it, and James is letting it. He goes to school, he works at the bookstore, he reads, he waits. The waiting is a skill I wish I could teach him — the Simmons skill, the preacher's skill — but waiting can only be learned through waiting, and he is learning it, one day at a time.

Carrie has started her winter break reading list — self-imposed, as always — which includes three more Japanese novels and a biography of a Japanese American woman who was interned during World War II. She is building a world inside her head, a Japan of books and language and cultural knowledge, and when she finally goes there — which she will, I am certain of it — she will not be arriving for the first time. She will be arriving for the hundredth time, having visited in every book she's ever read.

Of all the dishes I made that week — the she-crab soup, the cornbread, the sweet potato pie, the Hoppin’ John — it was soup that kept calling me back. There is something about standing at the stove and stirring something warm and slow that feels like prayer, or at least like the closest I can get to it on a Wednesday night. This butternut squash soup isn’t Mama’s recipe, but it belongs to the same family of cooking: the kind you make when you need your hands busy and your kitchen full of good steam. Robert was right that I was grieving. But he was also right to sit down and eat the bowl I set in front of him without saying another word about it.

Prep Time: 15 minutes | Cook Time: 40 minutes | Total Time: 55 minutes | Servings: 6

Ingredients

1 large butternut squash (about 3 pounds), peeled, seeded, and cubed
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
1 medium yellow onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
3 cups chicken or vegetable broth
1/2 cup heavy cream
1/2 teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/4 teaspoon ground cinnamon
1 tablespoon pure maple syrup
Salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
Toasted pepitas and a swirl of cream, for serving

Instructions

Cook the aromatics. Melt the butter in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Add the diced onion and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft and translucent, about 5 minutes. Add the garlic and cook for 1 minute more.
Simmer the squash. Add the cubed butternut squash and broth to the pot. Bring to a boil, then reduce heat to medium-low, cover, and simmer until the squash is very tender and easily pierced with a fork, about 25 to 30 minutes.
Blend until smooth. Remove from heat and use an immersion blender to puree the soup directly in the pot until completely smooth and velvety. Alternatively, carefully transfer in batches to a countertop blender, venting the lid slightly to release steam.
Season and finish. Stir in the heavy cream, nutmeg, cinnamon, and maple syrup. Season generously with salt and pepper. Return to low heat and warm through for 3 to 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
Serve. Ladle into bowls and garnish with toasted pepitas and a swirl of cream. Serve warm with crusty bread or, if you’re feeling like I was that week, a wedge of fresh cornbread.

Nutrition (per serving)

Our Best Butternut Squash Soup — A Week of Cooking Through Goodbye