Thanksgiving Make Ahead Recipe: Roasted Acorn Squash Soup

Thanksgiving is coming! I am up early on the Sunday morning before Thanksgiving. My philosophy and strategy regarding Thanksgiving is that it is fun when done in small doses. I try and make as much as I can ahead of time.


This morning, I am making Roasted Acorn Squash Soup.  My plan is to freeze the soup and then defrost it the night before Thanksgiving. The day of, I will throw it in a crockpot, which will allow me to have one more easy vegan dish, to make my vegan and health-conscious guests happy.

Yesterday, my mixed doubles tennis partner said: "If you live in Seattle, you have to know how to cook for vegans."  Another great option in Seattle is to order a vegan take-out for Thanksgiving dinner; which is what he and his wife are doing this year.

Since pureed soup is vegan, it is good soup to freeze and I may save some for myself to bring to work for lunch.

I sliced the acorn squash in half, using a serrated knife.  Then I added olive oil, Kosher salt and pepper and roasted them in the oven at 400 degrees for 40 minutes.

You can save the acorn squash seeds for a nutritious snack for your Thanksgiving guests. 

While the acorn squash was cooking, I rough chopped carrots, shallots, yellow and red onions and a granny smith apple. If you are in a rush, take the time to cut the carrots into smaller pieces.

I took all the scraps from the apples, carrots and onions and threw them into a stock pan to make basic vegetable broth. Since this is a Thanksgiving make ahead dish, I have time to make the broth while the acorns are roasting and cooling off.

Thanksgiving is a great time to make stock. I raided the refrigerator and gathered celery bottoms, leaves, more onion peels, and garlic peels.  I peeled extra carrots and prepped vegetables that have for other dishes I need to make this week.  I threw this "waste" in the stock pan to make vegetable broth.

For the soup, I sautéed the rough chopped items in dutch oven with some olive oil.  After everything was starting to look translucent, I added my spices and gave them extra time to toast.  It is starting to smell like Thanksgiving!

Since I don't have the broth ready yet, I added about a quarter cup of water to simmer on low for
about 5 mins and then covered the pan and turned off the heat.

After the squash has cooled and the broth was strained, I scooped out the flesh of the squash and added 3 1/2 cups broth to the dutch oven pot.

I let this cook for 20 minutes and then pureed the ingredients using my immersion blender. I skipped the step to add salt and pepper, because I will season this on Thanksgiving while this is being heated up in a crock pot.

Since the ingredients were mostly cool, I poured them in containers and put them in the freezer to be ready to go for Thanksgiving day.

Making this soup ahead of Thanksgiving is easy.  I modified this Roasted Acorn Squash Soup recipe from Lacey Baier's blog.

OMG! Take a breath! Ohm! Since writing this blog post on Sunday morning, my oven died - just 3 days before Thanksgiving.  At least the burners work!  I cannot bake or roast and we have guest coming.  The repair man is set to come out today.  I am so glad that I got one recipe done. Stay tuned and see how I adjust my plan for Thanksgiving to handle this - or if my oven can be repaired!

---

My blog is about living in the Pacific Northwest.  Here is photo of my view this morning.