How to cook orange-ginger spiced buttercup squash soup

Gather and clean all your ingredients

Dice your onion. It's ok to cry, real men and women do.

Peel your potatoes. I cut the tops and bottoms off, then peel between the slices. This method is faster then just randomly peeling around the tater.

Cube up the potatoes

Roughly chop the garlic.

Mince the ginger and zest the orange.

Roughly chop the cilantro.

Dice the ham.

Peel the squash. The skins can be hard and sometimes you need to run over it a few times with the peeler to get it all.

Core the squash with a spoon

Cube the squash.

Once everything is prepped, time to turn on the stove.

Sauté the onions, ham, garlic, ginger and zest over medium high heat.

After the veg has softened and everything is hot and sweaty, cool it down with the beer. (In other words, deglaze the pan)

Toss in the chili flakes. You could add these earlier in the process, I just didn't think about until this stage.

Add the oranges(halved), squash and potatoes and heat them up.

Add the stock and bring it up to a boil.

Reduce to low boil and cook until the potatoes and are tender.

Find the 4 orange halves and squeeze as much juice out as possible. Toss the juiceless orange carcass in the compost.

Add the cilantro once everything is tender.

Scoop the soup into a blender. Make sure you get an equal amount of the broth and the solids. ( you can use a hand blender at this stage but I like the texture a blender creates )

Blend er up. Make sure you vent the cover so that The steam doesn't blow the lid off. I always cover the top with a towel as well, just incase she blows.

Pour the soup back into a pot for seasoning.

I like adding vinegar to my soups to liven them up a bit. This is done to taste, depending on how flavorful the squash and veg, add a little and then add more if needed.

Mmmmm. So smooth and thick the wooden spoon stands up.

Voila. Silky smooth, healthy and delicious.

Serve it with a scoop sour cream and some bread.

Thanks for checking out my guide. If you make this, let me know how it turned out. Feel free to ask a question. If this inspired you, please share, like and follow! Cheers.