Gordon Ramsay’s butternut squash soup is the spiced squash and lentil one from his 2019 cookbook, Quick and Delicious. Onion and cumin go first, then a paste of garlic, ginger and red chiles with mild curry powder. Cubed squash, red lentils and coconut cream cook until soft before it’s all blended. It takes about 50 minutes and serves 4.
He sees soup as proper fast food, and this one as a meal in a bowl that’s nourishing, warming and filling. The red lentils thicken it as well, so it eats like a full meal.
The finish is a quick curry oil: curry leaves, cumin and ½ teaspoon of curry powder fried for a moment in hot oil. Drizzled over with the coconut cream held back from the pot, it gives every bowl a crackle of spice on top.
Gordon Ramsay’s Spiced Squash and Lentil Soup
Course: SoupsCuisine: BritishDifficulty: Easy4
20
minutes30
670
kcalA filling Gordon Ramsay squash soup, thickened with lentils and made creamy with coconut, then finished with curry oil, crisp curry leaves and sliced red chile.
Ingredients
- For the soup:
1 tablespoon light olive oil
3 tablespoons (40 g) butter
1 onion, peeled and diced
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
4 garlic cloves, peeled
2-inch (5 cm) piece of ginger root, peeled (not ground ginger)
2 red chiles, such as Fresno, deseeded for a milder heat
1 teaspoon mild curry powder
2¼ pounds (1 kg) butternut squash, about 1 medium squash
5 cups (1.2 liters) chicken or vegetable stock
1¼ cups (250 g) red lentils
1 cup (250 ml) canned coconut cream, a little over half a 13.5-ounce can
sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
- For the curry oil and garnish:
2 tablespoons light olive oil
1 teaspoon cumin seeds
a large handful of fresh curry leaves
½ teaspoon mild curry powder
1 red chile, finely sliced, deseeded for a milder heat
Directions
- Prep: Peel the squash, scoop out the seeds with a spoon and cut the flesh into ½-inch (1 cm) cubes. Blend the garlic, ginger and chiles to a paste in a small food processor.
- Start: Heat the oil and butter in a large (5-quart) pot over medium heat. When the butter melts, add the onion and cumin seeds and cook for 2 to 3 minutes, until the onion starts to soften. Add the paste and curry powder and cook for 2 to 3 minutes more.
- Squash: Add the squash and stock, turn the heat to high and bring to a boil. Add the lentils and cook for 10 minutes.
- Coconut: Whisk the coconut cream smooth, keep 6 tablespoons for the garnish and stir the rest into the pot. Cook over high heat, stirring often so the lentils don’t catch, for about 10 minutes more, until the squash crushes easily and the lentils are soft.
- Curry oil: Meanwhile, heat the oil in a small frying pan over medium heat until it shimmers. Stand back, add the cumin seeds, curry leaves and curry powder and stir as the leaves crackle and crisp, then take the pan off the heat.
- Blend: Blend the soup with an immersion blender until smooth, or in batches in a blender with the lid vented, adding a splash of stock if it’s too thick. Season, ladle into bowls, drizzle over the saved coconut cream and the curry oil, and scatter over the sliced chile.
Notes
- Buy unsweetened canned coconut cream, not the sweet cream of coconut sold for cocktails.
- Curry leaves are sold at Indian grocers and freeze well. Without them, the curry oil still works with just the cumin and curry powder.
- For a vegan soup, use vegetable stock and swap the butter for the same amount of oil or a vegan butter.
- He makes a double batch and freezes it for a quicker meal later. Freeze it before the garnish for up to 3 months, keep it 3 days in the fridge, and whisk it as it reheats since the coconut can separate.
- To peel the garlic fast, shake the cloves hard in a metal pan with a tight lid for about 30 seconds, his time-saving tip.
FAQs
How do I peel a butternut squash?
Cut off both ends, then halve it where the narrow neck meets the round base so each piece sits flat. Peel with a Y-shaped vegetable peeler, scoop the seeds out of the base with a spoon, as he does, and dice it into ½-inch pieces.
Is this soup vegan?
Not as written, because it starts with 3 tablespoons of butter, but he says to use vegetable stock to make it vegan, so make that swap too. The coconut cream gives it body without any dairy, and his carrot and coriander soup, another red lentil soup, keeps its only dairy for the yogurt on top.
How spicy is it?
That depends on your chiles, since the curry powder is mild. The heat comes from the 2 red chiles in the paste and the sliced one on top.
Deseed them, as he suggests, for a milder bowl, or leave the seeds in for more kick.
Does he make a roasted butternut squash soup?
Not exactly, but his roasted pumpkin soup from Christmas with Gordon works with butternut squash, he says. There, the squash would be roasted in halves with garlic and rosemary and finished with wild mushrooms.
Zaytouna Studio Team is the kitchen team behind Chef Ramsay Recipes. We cook Gordon Ramsay’s recipes from his cookbooks and videos in a home kitchen and write them up for yours, with US and metric measurements.