11.05.06

The Results are in…

Posted in The Story, Recipes at 11:33 pm by Chef Matt

OK, so I ran a sample batch of both soup recipes this afternoon, one while roasting the squash, and one with the peeled squash pieces boiled in the water. I have the results here.

But first, there is something that I realized had to change with my technique for both of these as compared to the steaming method. I cook the squash guts in the water of the soup so as to extract as much flavor from the squash as possible. With both of these methods, I have to strain the liquid BEFORE cooking/adding the squash in(to) the liquid. A slight variation to be sure, but a noted one as I was fishing seeds out of one of the batches for some time as a result of this original oversight.

So for this test, I made sure I bought one large squash and used two halves of the same squash for each batch of soup so as to keep that consistent. All other ingredients were measured and added at roughly the same time, so as to control for almost all other variables except how the squash was prepared for the soup.

“OK, is this soup better or worse?… You picked the one with the dead rat in it! Good job!”

As my own personal tasting panel I had my lovely wife, her parents and my mom over to taste the two soups. They were given a blind taste test, not knowing which was which, and I took down their comments and preferences with regards to both soups.

Surprisingly, the roasted squash soup came out as the smoother and creamier version of the soup, but it was also considerably sweeter than the boiled squash soup. We believe this may have had something to do with the caramelization of the sugars involved in the roasting process. The squash flavor was big and pleasant in both soups, but it was more “true to form” and “squashy” in the boiled squash soup version. While most agreed that the boiled squash soup needed a little more salt (a tweak that can easily be rectified in the kitchen when we go to production) it was clear that the boiled squash soup was preferred by all members of my tasting committee.

As for the preparation standpoint of things, the peeling of the squash was not so bad. I used three different techniques for peeling the squash. I used a knife, a standard vegetable peeler and also my serrated vegetable peeler (which is trickier to use, but great for hard-to-peel items like bell peppers and uncooked tomatoes. The standard vegetable peeler gave me the best results, though it did take about 2-3 strokes in the same place to get through all the skin. As a long term solution, I am not sure how soon this would wear out the blades of the peeler, but for ease of use and speed of finished product, this was surely the best way to go. (The serrated peeler continues to be for thin-skinned items only.)

So onward and upward - it is back to the kitchen to see which way works best in our space, but it is good to know I have a back-up method if we can’t put together a good steaming apparatus in the kitchen!

Matt

PS Thanks again for all your comments, I really like the interactivity of this blog, and would love to know more about what you all think. To that end, I am occasionally going to put in a poll - like this one below. Just for fun, and just to see what you all think of things. Maybe I will use it to determine which recipes I post, or maybe you can help pick what I write on… Anyway, have fun with it, and let me know what you think!

Poll Closed. Here are the results: Which of the following is your favorite fall/winter soup?		Votes
Lentil	15%	4
Chicken Noodle	7%	2
Minestrone	11%	3
Butternut Squash	26%	7
Goulash	4%	1
Cream of Vegetable (any)	0%	0
Plain Hot Broth	0%	0
Split Pea & Ham	30%	8
Other (tell me about it in the comments!)	7%	2
27 votes total

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11.02.06

Revisiting the Butternut Squash Soup Technique

Posted in The Story, Recipes at 11:50 pm by Chef Matt

A lot of you wrote me in various forms offering up suggestions for how to cook the squash that does not involve my steaming it. I appreciate the ideas - anything that would make life easier on me is welcome. So here is a little coverage of your ideas:

1. Roast the squash on a baking sheet
While it is a great idea to roast squash - if you cut it in half and do it cut side down, it is almost like steaming it in the skin. The problems here are as follows:

1. This is a dry heat cooking method, not a moist heat method like steaming. It is going to be drying out the squash as it roasts in the oven.
   
2. The cut edge of the squash will caramelize, and that flavor will go into the soup, which may or may not be a good thing.
   
3. I have heard that the drying out of the squash in this technique will make it so it does not puree properly - it is a bit gritty. That is a deal breaker for this method all together if this is true
   
4. Finally, this takes up an extra pan, which takes up an oven as well, and can take an hour. In a small kitchen like ours, this could be a problem as well.
   

Not a big deal? YOU peel them all then!

This is a good idea too, and it is a moist heat cooking method. It also solves the problem of working in the same pan that the soup is cooking in, so no extra pots are wasted. If anything we use LESS pots, as we don’t need a steaming apparatus. So what is wrong with this technique?

Have you ever peeled a butternut squash?…

3. Sauté squash pieces to cook it
This is a “worst of both worlds” idea to me, as it would use extra pans, and involve peeling the squash (cubing it too). I don’t think I will be doing this one.

But I will try the first two methods in my own kitchen to see how they work, to see if anything else can work as well since both of these possibly can be easier than a jury-rigged steaming system (which I am still working out the details of anyway. So I think I will buy a squash this weekend and use half of it each way in a half-batch of soup.

I’ll let you all know how it goes. Thanks so much for your ideas people!

Matt

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