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Butternut Squash and Ginger Soup with White Beans

The creaminess comes from a tin of white beans blended into the soup, not from cream. Cut the squash into small, even pieces and it is soft in twenty minutes, with no need to peel it perfectly.

Lunch

40

Serves 4

Bowl of smooth orange butternut squash soup topped with toasted pumpkin seeds and a swirl of olive oil

Ingredients

  • 1 medium butternut squash (about 1kg), peeled, deseeded and cut into 2cm cubes
  • 1 tbsp olive oil
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 carrots, chopped
  • 3 cloves garlic, sliced
  • A thumb-sized piece of ginger, grated
  • 1 tsp ground cumin
  • 1 tin (400g) cannellini or other white beans, drained and rinsed
  • 1 litre vegetable stock (check the label if you avoid gluten)
  • Half a lemon
  • 40g pumpkin seeds, toasted, to serve

Method

  1. Heat the oil in a large pan over a medium heat and cook the onion and carrots for 6 minutes, until softened.
  2. Add the garlic, ginger and cumin and stir for a minute, until fragrant.
  3. Add the squash and the stock, bring to the boil, then cover and simmer for 20 minutes, until the squash is soft enough to crush against the side of the pan with a spoon.
  4. Add the beans and simmer for 2 more minutes to warm them through.
  5. Blend until completely smooth, in batches if you use a jug blender, and leave a gap in the lid for the steam to escape. The beans disappear and give the soup the body of a cream soup.
  6. Add a squeeze of lemon and taste before salting: most stock is already salty. Thin it with a little hot water if you like it looser. Serve topped with the toasted pumpkin seeds. It keeps for four days in the fridge and freezes well for three months.

Why it works

This is autumn in a bowl, and it is as light as it looks: under 300 calories with the seeds on top, with 9g of fibre and 11g of protein, most of both from the beans.

Soup first means eating less, and it has been measured. In a Penn State study of 60 adults, people who started lunch with a bowl of vegetable soup ate 20 per cent fewer calories at that meal overall, including the soup, than when they skipped it. It did not matter much whether the soup was chunky or blended. The volume and the water fill the stomach before the rest of the meal arrives, which makes a bowl of this a useful start to a meal when you are trying to lose weight: losing weight in menopause.

The orange colour is beta-carotene, which the body turns into vitamin A as it needs it, and carrots add more. Ginger gives the soup its warmth; claims that it melts fat or balances hormones go well beyond the evidence, so it is here for flavour.

Blending white beans into the soup is the swap worth stealing for any creamy soup. It replaces cream with fibre and protein, and it is why this keeps you full through the afternoon rather than for an hour. The fibre also slows how quickly the natural sugar in the squash reaches the blood.

At 11g, the protein is modest for a lunch. Add a spoonful of Greek yogurt, or eat it with the sardine and white bean smash on sourdough. For another warming soup, see the lentil soup with turmeric and lemon.