Crock- Pot Gingered Apple Butternut Squash Soup

A few weekends ago the fam packed up and headed to our favorite local orchard, Reed Valley Orchard, to let the girls have fun picking fruit from the trees. They were adorable trying to find the perfect apples.


No rotten apples made it home in our basket!



 Apples are a favorite in our house so we had to come home with lots to eat, cook and share. We've had apple cobbler, apples and grilled cheese sandwiches and I hope to make apple butter this weekend, and I thought I'd share this yummy apple soup I made yesterday. Since I was not going to be around later in the day to get dinner ready I decided to create a soup that could be cooked in the crock-pot.

Gingered Apple Butternut Squash Soup


1 tbsp olive oil
4 cups of butternut squash (see below for instructions on how to prepare fresh squash)
1 small onion, diced
2 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp fresh ginger, minced
3 tart apples, peeled, cored and diced
2 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp cumin
2 tsp salt
4 cups vegetable broth
1 tbsp honey

If using a whole butternut squash:
Peel squash with vegetable peeler then cut in half and scoop out seeds and discard. Dice sections in to small 1 inch cubes.

For soup:
Heat oven to 400 degrees. Add squash, onion, garlic and ginger to bowl and toss with olive oil. Spread out on baking sheet and roast for 15 minutes.
When vegetables are ready, add to crock-pot. Peel, core and dice apples and add to pot along with the remainding ingredients. Heat on low for 6 hours. When ready use either a hand mixer or potato masher to puree soup.

Note: You may have noticed that I've had two crock-pot recipes highlighted the past couple of weeks, it's all thanks to a great co-worker! The two of us started in our new positions at the same time, she in her state and I in Kentucky, but she recognized the need for meal planning with the traveling required for our jobs. So, thanks Ashley for having me pull my heavy pot out of the closet and find something new to fix instead of the old "chicken in a pot" meal. Enjoy!