Hey! It’s time to get cracking up for my special for our big Thanksgiving feast. Mine has butternut squash, carrots and oranges and every which way. That is why I call it hey! Orange you’re glad it’s Thanksgiving soup. I kill me, all right.

This is a very simple soup and you don’t have to make it just at Thanksgiving. It’s a good one for any cool day. It warms you up from the inside out.

I am starting by chopping up four carrots here. This will make enough soup for six starter portions or you could get four on tray portions out of it. Just run your knife thorough it and the smaller you chop your carrots, of course the quicker they are going to cook up for you.

And this soup is a combination of fresh veggies and frozen veggies. The butternut squash would take me the longest, so I’m taking a little help from the store on that one. I bought two boxes of puree that is going to go into this soup. I am adding some EVOO to coat the bottom of my soup pot and a generous pat of butter. Melt those two together and it will let the butter come to a little higher cooking temperature. I put a little butter in there because it adds a little sweetness to the soup. Nice, creamy taste in the background.

Let me get my carrots in there and working and run my knife through a small onion. It smells good already. My mom is a riot, she loves squash. She especially loves butternut squash and she loves sweet potatoes too and she definitely loves pumpkins. But if you bake any of those things up in your pie if you make a squash pie, you know pumpkin pie or a sweet potato pie, my mom eats out all the center of the pie and refuses to eat the crust. She is not satisfied with small portions of it either. So, I’m left with just a bunch or empty pie shells. Grumpy people, they got jibbed out of the pie and my mom, you know, she is happy and full of her squash. So, I thought, maybe I’ll just move courses and do the squash as a soup. It works out well and mom does not go through all the trouble beating up the pies.

So, you let this cook together a few minutes then you heat with the orange, the orange flavor and the added extra orange color with a little pulpy orange juice. Now you can half a cup or really pulpy orange juice that is ready to drink or you could use two big spoonfuls of orange juice concentrate from your freezer.

Let that cook together and seasoned up with just little salt and pepper. Excellent. After a few minutes, it will look sort of like this over here. This is just the cooked up carrots and onion. Now you get this into the food processor, so we can puree this.

The OJ sweetened this up nicely and that orange flavor has concentrated through it. A way we go. Once you get it fairly smooth, a little bit of weight left to it, it’s not bad. Once you get it fairly smooth, get it back into your soup pot. Easy clean up on this one too, let me tell you.

It’s a new trick, hold on to the blade with your finger when you’re scooping stuff back out of here or you’ll end up fishing your blade at your soup pot. Then you are just going to add some store bought chicken stock. There is no cream in this soup. That is another really great reason I love it because I can eat balls and balls of it and not feeling all guilty about it. It is very healthful.

Store bought chicken stock and two boxes right from the frozen food section of pureed butternuts squash. You know, it looks like this. This sized box, two of these guys. Then you just combine that together. See it’s got a nice way immediately but I just let it thicken up a touch and let it go about ten minutes over a nice simmer and it looks like this. And that not look great? Look at that. Oh that is just perfect and it smells delicious with the orange. I'm going to turn that off so we can get it ready to go.

Now, the finishing touch—a little nutmeg. That pot is a popping. I’m going to put the lid back on it. Get it off the heat for a second. There we go. A little zip of nutmeg is the thing that is going to make them go. What is that in here? Perfect garnishes for this, a little fresh chive, some snipped chives, some fresh thyme, delicious.

Then, no need to transfer this, check it out. Just put the lid right back on top. Something like that a bit and it’s good to go. I am ready to hit the road and so is my soup. When I get there I am just going to put this same pot right back on the stove over a very low flame until it’s time to eat. I told you it was easy, right?

It’s a winner and it works every time. Enjoy it guys.