Chris's Sunshine Soup! A vegan bowl of sun!

vegan butternut squash soup

I cannot take credit for this little baby. This is my partner's go to, soupwise, even before I was vegan. It has evolved over the last couple of years to this warming bowl of roasted sunshine coloured vegetables, flavoured with ginger, chilli and garlic and bolstered with a good handful of lentils to make it a hearty belly warmer.

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My other half and creator of this soup!

I used wet garlic, just because I had it in, but regular garlic is just as good. I am all about making a recipe as faff free as possible, and this ticks all the boxes in that respect, the veg can be roughly chopped before roasting - they don't have to look pretty, they are getting blitzed anyway!

It is definitely worth roasting the veg before they go into the stock and lentils and it brings out the flavour and adds depth to the colour of the soup.

Ingredients

800ml veg stock

1 can reduced fat coconut milk

80g red lentils

1 butternut squash

1 large carrot

1 medium onion

1 peeled chunk of ginger, about the size of a thumb

1 red pepper

1 yellow pepper

1 red chilli

5 peeled garlic cloves

1 tbsp coconut oil

Salt and pepper to taste

Method

Preheat the oven to 200c

Into a large roasting dish put the oil, the butternut squash, peeled and roughly chopped, the peppers deseeded and roughly chopped. Peel and chop the onion and the carrot and add those too. Again, just roughly chop the ginger, the garlic and the chilli and mix those in.

Roast the vegetables until they are starting to brown and soften - around 20 mins. Stir a couple of times during cooking

Meanwhile, add the lentils and stock to a large pan, bring to the boil, cover and simmer whilst the vegetables roast. Cook until soft, should take a similar amount of time as the vegetable

Add the roasted vegetables to the pan, including all the cooking juices, cover, and simmer for another 10 minutes or until the larger vegetables are completely soft

Add the coconut milk, season with salt and pepper to taste, then blitz until smooth. I added some broken bits of Aldi pink peppercorn and green lemon tortillas as sprinkles.

Debbie