I highly recommend you try Smitten Kitchen’s recipe for Warm Butternut Squash and Chickpea Salad. It’s extremely delicious, warm or cold.
A lot of recipes say something like, “peel, seed, and cut into chunks.” But that “peel” part can be a nightmare unless you have a serrated vegetable peeler. They should stock them right by the butternut squash in the grocery store.
Here is my recipe for soup. I made it once for Thanksgiving thinking the kids would just skip it, but now every year they ask “Is Aunt Z going to make the soup again?!” These kids are chicken-nugget picky eaters, so I can assure you that this stuff is really, really good. The proportions are pretty inexact, too - just use the squash you have, etc.
Butternut Squash Soup with Cider Cream
5 tbps butter
A big squash or maybe two little ones
2 cups chopped leeks (just the white and pale green parts)
1/2 cup chopped peeled carrots
1/2 cup chopped celery
2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored, and chopped
1 1/2 tsp dried thyme (I use more and fresh)
1/2 tsp crumbled dried sage leaves (also more and fresh)
5 cups chicken stock or low sodium broth, I use the boxed kind
1 1/2 cups apple cider
2/3 cup sour cream
1/2 cup whipping cream
Forget all that crap about peeling the squash - whack it in half, scrape out the goop, and slap each half inside down on some olive oil on a rimmed baking sheet at, I dunno, 400 or something until it’s softened, maybe 40 minutes. (The part above where the seeds were will get kind of wrinkly. You really can’t mess this up.) Get out your big dutch oven or whatever it is you make soup in and melt the butter. Throw in the carrots, leeks, celery, and scoop out the roasted squash meat and toss that in too. Sautee until the carrots are softened a little, about 15 minutes. Mix in the apples, thyme, and sage. Add the stock and a cup of the cider and bring to a boil. Cover, reduce to simmer, and simmer about 30 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the apples are tender. This will smell fantastic.
Puree it however you like - in batches in a blender or with your handy immersion blender. You want it pretty smooth. If you’re not serving it now, you can throw it in the fridge at this point. When you’re ready to serve, enrich with the whipping cream.
For the cider cream for the top, boil the rest of the cider until reduced by half (I like to double the cider cream to be sure I have enough - just double the cider and the sour cream.) Cool it a bit and whisk into the sour cream - it might break a bit but it will come together before you’re done. Drizzle on top of the soup. It’s very pretty.
Its also good deep fried with a tempura batter.
Peeling it is a pain, and cubing it really isn’t much easier. So be prepared. I generally cook with sweet potatos for a similar taste/texture because they are easier to work with.
Good in risotto as well.
As in the soup recipe I posted above, many butternut squash recipes that tell you to peel or cube or whatever are just fine if you cut it in half and roast it. Obviously it depends on the recipe, but that’s the only way I use it. Life’s too short and I like my fingers too much to try to cube the things.