This highly flavorful roasted butternut squash soup is flavored with poblano and jalapeno peppers, along with a hint of cinnamon and nutmeg. Drizzle with coconut lime cream sauce for a delicious flavorful soup you won’t soon forget.
This veganized copycat recipe of the Jerome Arizona’s Asylum Restaurant Butternut Squash Soup is far from ordinary and the BEST roasted butternut squash soup I’ve ever made.
You’ll find the tiniest flash of heat from poblano and jalapeno peppers, a little sweetness from brown sugar or maple syrup, and a hint of spice from cinnamon and nutmeg. Top it with a drizzle of my Coconut Lime Crema for a delicious cacophony of flavors that will leave them begging for more.
(Read more about Jerome Arizona – America’s most haunted city- the Asylum Restaurant, the inspiration for this butternut squash soup recipe, and perhaps a ghost story or two after the recipe card below.)
Reasons to LOVE this roasted vegan butternut squash soup
This is literally my favorite butternut squash soup! And I do have a few butternut soup recipes on my site. But this one….THIS ONE is truly special! I think you’ll love this soup too because:
- a copycat recipe of The Asylum Restaurant’s butternut squash soup
- veganized (the original recipe is not) –click here for more vegan soups, stews, and chowders
- dairy-free
- complexity of flavors
- lightly spicy – but not too much
- drizzled with a highly flavorful coconut lime cream sauce
Butternut squash makes the best soup
Because butternut squash has such a mild flavor, it blends perfectly with stronger flavors like red peppers in creamy vegan butternut squash and red pepper soup, and coconut curry butternut squash soup.
Pair roasted butternut squash with coconut cream and you have a rich and creamy sauce when making roasted butternut squash sauce or butternut squash curry with chickpeas. It’s the perfect combination!
Ingredients needed to make this roasted butternut squash soup
For the soup:
- 2 Butternut Squash
- 2 poblano peppers
- extra virgin olive oil
- white or yellow onion
- 12 ounces Amber Beer
- vegetable broth
- brown sugar – or substitute with maple syrup
- garlic, chopped
- jalapeño minced (I used jarred tamed)
- cinnamon
- nutmeg
- canned coconut milk (You will need two cans total for this recipe and only use the cream part from the top of each can.)
- cilantro to top
- a little squeeze of fresh lime to top
- You will also need an immersion blender (best) or a countertop blender.
And for the very necessary coconut lime cream sauce. I actually developed the coconut lime crema as a separate, stand-alone recipe; but feel it is such a necessary element of this butternut squash soup that I included it with this recipe.
- ¾ cup coconut milk canned, (you will only use the cream part on the top and discard the clear liquid)
- lime juice
- garlic powder
- salt
How to make the most amazing vegan butternut squash soup ever!
Follow these steps and soon you’ll have a steaming hot bowl of your own delicious recipe for roasted butternut waiting on your table and ready for you to dig in!
Step 1: Roast the butternut squash and poblano pepper
Preheat oven to 400° F. You will be roasting the two butternut squash in large shallow roasting pans or on a large rimmed baking sheet. I use parchment paper to line my baking sheet for easier clean-up.
Cut both of the butternut squash in half and deseed. Throw out the seeds. There is no need to peel the butternut squash before roasting. Brush the cut edges with a little olive oil and sprinkle with salt.
Place the cut and deseeded squash halves on the prepared baking sheet and put them in the oven. You might need to use two shallow roasting pans or baking sheets depending on the size of your pans. You will be cooking the butternut squash for about 45 to 50 minutes until lightly browned and fork-tender.
While the butternut squash is in the oven roasting, prepare and roast the poblano peppers. You will roast the poblano peppers for only 25-30 minutes until the skin is blackened. If you have two oven racks, make sure to space them so you will have room to roast both the squash and the peppers.
About poblano peppers
Poblano peppers are a somewhat mild green chili pepper very popular in Mexico where they originated. Poblano peppers are used as the base for many sauces. They are perfect for stuffing or cutting into strips and added as an ingredient.
There are red and green poblano peppers. The red peppers are a little hotter. We use green poblano pepper for this recipe. There is not a perfect substitute for this smoky medium-hot pepper that is about the size of green bell pepper (but nowhere close to the same flavor!) Anaheim chili peppers and jalapeno peppers are both suggested as hotter but suitable substitutes for the poblano pepper (read this informative blog post by chilipeppermadness.com).
In this recipe, we are roasting and removing the waxy outer layer of skin before chopping and adding it to our soup. Roasted poblano peppers lend a slightly spicy smoky flavor to savory dishes which is exactly what we are going for!
Cut the peppers in half length-wise. Remove the seeds from each green chili and cut off the stems. Be sure to wash your hands immediately after you de-seed poblano chiles and do not touch your eyes while handling any chili pepper.
Roast face down in the same oven as you are roasting the butternut squash. After about 25-30 minutes the skin will have blackened. Remove from the oven and place the roasted blackened chiles in a plastic baggie and leave them in there while you are preparing the other ingredients. The steam from the baggie will help to loosen the skins.
Step 2: Scoop and chop the vegetables
Remove the cooked squash from the oven when it is nicely browned or even a little blackened around the edges and fork-tender. Allow cooling for a few minutes till you can easily handle the roasted squash. During this cooling time, I prepare the other ingredients.
Once the squash has cooled enough to handle, scoop the cooked butternut squash out of the skins. There is no need to peel the butternut squash at this point – simply scoop out that lovely roasted flesh!
BUT If you are having challenges scooping out the cooked butternut squash flesh, the skin will be easy enough to peel away. This is why I like to use parchment paper. See how easy this will be to clean up?
While the butternut squash is cooling you can chop the onion, garlic, and jalapeño. I use “tamed” jarred jalapeños and use about 10 rings. I do not like it too hot. If you do enjoy more heat, then use a regular jalapeño pepper. Remove the stem and seeds, then chop.
By this time the poblano peppers will have steamed enough and be ready for you to remove the skin and chop. Just grab an edge of the skin and see what you can lift off by hand. Use a paring knife if necessary to remove the skin and wash your hands thoroughly after handling – and avoid touching your eyes or mouth.
Chop the skinned poblano peppers into smallish pieces and set aside with the jalapeno peppers, minced garlic, and chopped onions.
Step 4: Time to make soup!
In a heavy-bottomed large pot, heat the oil. Add in the onion and cook for about 3 minutes until beginning to soften. Add the peppers and chopped garlic and continue cooking for another two minutes on medium/high until soft and beginning to brown on the edges.
Pour in the beer and stir the bottom to deglaze the pan.
Which beer is best to use? And do I have to add beer?
I use amber beer for this butternut squash soup recipe. Fat-tire is vegan and readily available in my house! You can check to see if your beer is vegan on barnivore.com
I suggest using amber or other similar “meaty” beer or ale for depth of flavor. Anything but a fruity-flavored beer or IPA. I do not suggest using an IPA for this recipe.
Will the alcohol fully cook out with this recipe? Possibly not. Please disclose that it contains beer and how much to anyone you are serving. If you do not want to use beer then substitute in a like amount of vegetable broth but be aware that the flavor will not be quite the same.
Adding the rest of the ingredients
Time to add the remaining ingredients with the exception of the coconut milk/cream. Add the vegetable broth, squash, brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. DO NOT add the coconut milk just yet. Cover and reduce heat to simmer for 30 minutes.
Special note: The original recipe the waiter gave me (see below after the recipe card) called for brown sugar and not maple syrup. The first few times I made this recipe I did use brown sugar instead of maple syrup. And it was a little bit too sweet for me. Substituting in maple syrup gave this vegan butternut squash soup recipe the right amount of sweetness without being overly sweet – so it’s a personal preference here.
Step 5: Blending with the coconut milk
I skim the cream from the top of a can of full-fat coconut milk. If you are trying to save calories and fat you could use lite coconut milk instead – or even substitute in oat milk or other plant milk (shudder!) – but be aware that you will be losing some of the creaminess.
Add the coconut cream to your vegan butternut squash soup and with an immersion (stick) blender, blend till mostly smooth. It’s okay to leave a few pieces and not be perfectly smooth. If you do not have an immersion blender you can blend in batches in your countertop blender or even a food processor. But that blending process just seems like a lot of work!
The very important coconut lime cream sauce
I was going to make my Coconut Lime Crema an optional topping for this soup but after making and taste testing several times, I really can’t do that! The coconut lime cream is such an important flavor enhancement for this soup! The original Asylum butternut squash recipe does use a lime cream sauce on top – but made with heavy dairy cream instead. This coconut lime cream is actually pretty perfect for this soup!
Use the second can of coconut milk (full fat) and skim off the three-fourths cup. Add the lime juice, garlic, and salt and whisk till nice and creamy, and smooth. You can use bottled real lime juice (unsweetened) or juice real limes.
Add a drizzle of the lime cream sauce right before serving. I use these wonderful squeeze bottles to make it easy to add a drizzle exactly where I want it to go. If you refrigerate the coconut lime cream it will harden and not squeeze easily from the tip. Just warm the bottle under running hot water or set it in a bowl of hot water and it will be nice and melty and squeezable in no time!
Serving suggestions for your vegan butternut squash soup
Top with cilantro, minced jalapenos, and a squeeze of lime. I like to serve wedges of lime on the side so people can use what they’d like. Add a little salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste.
Serve with some yummy french bread (coming soon) and a side salad for a complete meal. It’s always appropriate for beer drinkers to enjoy a nice cold one to match the beer in the soup!
This butternut squash soup recipe is delicious if served right away BUT leftover soup tastes even better! The flavors really do meld together nicely overnight. If stored in an airtight container, this soup will keep for at least five days in the refrigerator.
Health it up!
I know that some of my readers are oil-free. This soup is fairly whole-food plant-based (does the beer count?) and so you might also want to cook without the olive oil as well. Just saute in a little veggie broth instead-but watch the bottom of the pan so it does not burn. Will it be the same? Those who know, know. And don’t care:) If you feel better about using maple syrup, date syrup, or even coconut sugar then all will substitute well in this soup. But you do need a little something for sweetness.
For some more comforting soup recipes from Veggie Fun Kitchen, try:
I will admit that while I think that all of my vegan soups are super delicious, this roasted butternut squash soup recipe ranks amongst the top few…but you also might want to try some of my other favorites too!
- Veggie Lentil Soup
- Coconut Curry Butternut Squash Soup
- Creamy Tomato Soup
- Black Bean Pumpkin Soup
- Easy Corn Chowder
- Minestrone Soup
- Butternut Squash Soup with Rosemary and Thyme
The printable recipe card for the best ever Roasted Butternut Squash Soup!
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Poblano Pepper Roasted Butternut Squash soup with Coconut Lime Cream Drizzle Drizzle
Equipment
- immersion blender
Ingredients
- 2 Butternut Squash
- 2 poblano peppers
- 2 Tablespoons olive oil
- 1½ cups onion white or yellow, chopped
- 12 ounces Amber Beer
- 2 cups vegetable broth
- 1/3 cup brown sugar see notes
- 4 cloves garlic chopped
- 1 jalapeño minced, see notes
- ⅛ teaspoon cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon nutmeg
- ¾ cup coconut milk canned, you will only use the cream part on the top an discard the clear liquid coconut water.
- cilantro to top
coconut lime cream
- ¾ cup coconut milk canned, you will only use the cream part on the top and discard the clear liquid coconut water.
- 2 Tablespoons lime juice
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- ½ teaspoon salt
- olive oil and salt for roasting butternut squash
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400°
- Cut both butternut squash in half and deseed. Brush with olive oil and salt. Roast cut side up for 45 -50 minutes until tender. Allow to cool enough to handle.
- Cut the poblano peppers in half, deseed, and remove the stems. Roast in the same oven while the butternut squash is cooking for about 25-30 minutes or until the skin is blackened. Put into a large baggie and allow to steam in the bag for 10 minutes. This will loosen blackened skins which you will peel off and discard.
- Scoop the cooked butternut squash out of the skins and chop the skinned poblano peppers into smallish pieces and set aside. Chop the onion, garlic, and jalapeño. I use "tamed" jarred jalapeños and use about 10 rings. I do not like it too hot. If you do then use a regular jalapeño pepper. Remove the stem and seeds, then chop. Set all aside separately.
- In a heavy bottomed large pot, heat the oil. Add in the onion and cook for about 3 minutes until beginning to soften. Add the peppers and chopped garlic and continue cooking for another two minutes until soft and beginning to brown on the edges.
- Pour in the beer and stir the bottom to deglaze the pan. Add the vegetable broth, squash, maple syrup, cinnamon and nutmeg. DO NOT add the coconut milk just yet.
- Cover and simmer for 30 minutes.
- Add the cream from the top of one of the cans of coconut milk. Puree together with an immersion blender or blend in a blender in batches. Salt and pepper to taste.
Coconut Lime Cream
- While the soup is cooking, you can make the coconut lime cream. Do not stir or shake the can of coconut milk. Remove the top cream part to a small chilled bowl. Whisk together with the lime juice, garlic powder, and salt.
- Drizzle on the soup before eating and top with chopped cilantro. You should have enough coconut lime cream for the entire batch of soup if you plan portions accordingly. If you refrigerate any remaining cream to serve with leftover soup, warm slightly before using as it will have solidified in the fridge.
Notes
Nutrition
About Jermone Arizona, the inspiration for this Buternut Squash Soup, and yes, my ghost story
I sometimes like to tell a little backstory about my recipe inspirations. I know that nobody actually ever reads them lol! But I still need to say what I need to say. So I do it here – at the end of the post after the recipe card.
It was our 37th wedding anniversary. Yes, I know I’ve been married for a long time! We were combining a little anniversary trip with an exploratory possible retirement home trip and decided to check out parts of Arizona.
Jerome Arizona and the Haunted Hotel
My husband, who by the way, is not AT ALL into the supernatural, wanted to take me somewhere interesting while there and so decided on Jermone Arizona, once named the wickedest city in the west and now known to be one of the most haunted spots in the United States of America. (And yes, I’m a *little bit* into it. Shhhhh!)
So my sweet husband who, I mentioned above, is not at all into the ghostly thing knows that I kinda sorta am, and wanted to take me somewhere a little off the beaten path.
To set the stage, on the long car trip to Arizona, we listened to all the podcasts about Jerome. Once there we took a historical city tour during the day and learned about the combination of corporate greed and wild west manners that earned Jerome’s dubious honor of being the wickedest town in the west. But then at night, we took a ghost tour! (Sadly, no ghosts were on our tour haha!)
The Jerome Grand Hotel
And where did we decide to stay? Why in the Jerome Grand Hotel, of course, an abandoned hospital and upscale asylum from the early part of the 20th century, and now a hotel for the living…and not so living.
After checking in, we were immediately taken back in time while riding to our third-floor room in an old-fashioned elevator (built-in 1926), the type that requires the doors to be manually opened and closed.
Our room was a lovely corner room with an enclosed sunroom overlooking the valley in which recovering patients could enjoy the view and the gentle rays from the sun shining through the windows.
My little ghost story
After a fruitless night of ghost-hunting (and lots of eye-rolling by you-know-who), we were pretty tired. I immediately fell into a deep sleep and didn’t wake till morning.
I was nicely rested the next morning, but my husband was absolutely exhausted. He couldn’t sleep at all because of the “kids who kept running around”. He said they must have checked in in the middle of the night because he first heard them running around in the hallway outside our room and then on the floor above us.
But here is the thing…when we checked in we were told that the top floor was not occupied because of covid cleaning procedures. When I asked at the front desk about the family with children who checked in the night before, the clerk told me that nobody had checked in – and certainly nobody with children.
She then laughed and said that there actually weren’t any families with children staying that weekend and that “these things have been known to happen!” She wouldn’t tell me any more, only smiled.
Doing a little digging, the third floor has indeed been known to have resident cat ghost AND the mysterious sounds of children running around. My only question to my husband was “WHY DIDN’T YOU WAKE ME UP?!?” He said he honestly thought it was just irritating kids and inconsiderate parents. Humph!
If you have thirty minutes you might want to watch this episode about the Jerome Hotel from the Paranormal Files.
The Asylum Restaurant’s Butternut Squash Soup
The inspiration for this recipe came from the hotel’s Asylum Restaurant which is known to have a to-die-for (no pun intended) butternut squash soup. We were told by the waiter that it was “probably” vegan – which is never a good sign. This is why the chef was kind enough to come to our table and tell us exactly what was in the soup. Definitely NOT vegan. So I have never actually tasted the famous soup but adapted and veganized it from a photo of the recipe I found on Pinterest. Because that’s what I do. I hope you enjoy this delicious soup as much as we do!
Thank you so much for sharing this amazing recipe! Will surely have this again! It’s really easy to make and it tasted so delicious! Highly recommended!
A big hit for the butternut fans.