Spicy butternut squash and sweet potato dairy-free soup

This hearty soup with a kick is lovely and warming. It is also lactose-free unlike most shop-bought soups. I tend to make it mid-week, when I’m wondering what on earth to do with that squash in the fridge and the sweet potatoes cluttering the bottom of the veg rack. I freeze it in single portions so that I can defrost it for office lunch breaks or to go into a flask when out and about. This recipe will produce six generous portions at least. It takes an hour to cook, but you can be doing other things while it spends most of that time simmering on the hob.  

Ingredients

Table spoon sunflower oil

One butternut squash, the flesh peeled and cubed

Three or four sweet potatoes – more if they are small-sized, peeled and cut into big cubes

Dried chilli flakes

Dried parsley

Salt

Crushed black pepper

Vegetable stock cube

Method

• Boil a kettle of water and add a half litre of boiling water to a jug with a crumbled vegetable stock cube. Stir.
• Get out the biggest pan you have. I use a large double-handled frying pan, but a big saucepan would be fine. 
• Heat the sunflower oil in the pan and add the chopped squash and sweet potatoes, stir fry for two minutes. 
• Pour the stock cube water into the pan and add at least another ¾ litre of water, ensuring that the vegetables are completely covered with water. Bring to the boil.
• Turn down the heat to the lowest level which will maintain a slow simmer, add a generous sprinkle of chilli flakes and dried parsley to the pan. Season with salt and black pepper and put the lid onto the pan. 
• Allow the soup to simmer for twenty minutes. By then, the vegetables should be very soft when you press a knife into them.
• Turn off the heat. At this point, you need to blend the soup. I use a wand blender – standing it in the pan and blending the vegetables with short bursts as I move it slowly around the soup. If you don’t have a wand, then you will need to pour the contents of the pan into a blender and again, blend in short bursts until the soup is reasonably smooth.  
• At this point, the soup will be very thick, so you need to add more boiling water to the pan (or the blender), stirring it in until the soup feels like it is at the correct soupy consistency. Put the soup in the pan back onto a low heat and simmer again for at least half an hour, then serve or divide into portions and freeze.