Simple butternut squash soup with spicy cheesy seeds

This soup is really easy to make once you manage to wrestle the peel off the squash in the first place. For that reason, I find most people are pretty impressed by butternut squash soup so it's a good dish to do for other people too! I also love the bright sunny colour in the gorgeous weather we've been having lately. 

I thought I would use the seeds as well - they make a really yummy crunchy treat by themselves, and you can also be smug about not wasting anything too!

Serves 2 or more, depending on how big the squash is!

For the soup:

1 butternut squash

1 medium/large onion

1 stock cube

Sprinkle of pepper

Sprinkle of thyme (or sage), if you want

Olive oil 

For the seeds:

The scooped out seeds

Olive oil

Yeast flakes

Chilli flakes

1. Chop an onion into small pieces - leave on the side for a sec. 

2. Chop the butternut squash into manageable pieces. I usually cut it to separate the longer bit from the bulby bit first and work from there. Cut the peel off the edges too, and cut into bite sized chunks. 

3. Scoop out the seeds - discard the weird stringy stuff and throw the seeds into a bowl. This whole squash process takes a while, so put some music on so you don't lose the will to live. 

2. Pop the onion in a big pan with some olive oil and simmer for a few minutes. Chuck the butternut squash in afterwards, and stir on a lowish heat for 10 minutes or so until everything looks a bit squishier - you'll see the edges of the squash get a bit messy. Make sure you keep the heat low or the onions will burn and go bitter!

3. Boil the kettle, and pour in enough water to just cover the butternut squash. Crumble in a stock cube and mix it around. If it's only a little squash you're using, you might only need half a stock cube. 

4. The soup will need to simmer now, for 15-20 minutes. Maybe more if there's a lot of it. 

5. Put the oven on 200C or 390F. Pour a bit of olive oil over the seeds (just to coat them) and add your yeast flakes and chilli flakes. Mix it all up with a spoon, and tip them onto a baking tray. They need to go into the oven for about 10 minutes. 

6. With a masher, check how easily squishable the chunks of squash are. If they're nice and mushy, take the soup off the heat and whizz with a stick blender. If you don't have one, do your best with a masher and say you meant the soup to be rustic. 

7. Add your seeds, if you haven't munched them already. The seeds in the top photo were all I had left from this lot:

Serve with some crusty bread if you like! You could do the seeds in lots of different ways, maybe with curry powder or smoked paprika for a change.

Do you have a favourite soup? And the most serious question - chunky or smooth? I can't stand chunky soup!