Butternut Squash Soup for Liver Health - Ayurvedic Soup

A steaming hot bowl of squash soup is a powerhouse of nutrition. With each spoonful, there's refreshing vitamin C, soothing magnesium, balancing potassium, and liver-nourishing beta-carotene. And that's because vegetables that are deep orange, red, blue, and purple all support liver health. Signs of liver stress include heat and irritation in mind or body, an overreactive immune system, and general inflammation. So if you're feeling irritated or concerned about inflammation, it's time for some delicious soup to soothe and restore balance. Keep watching, and I'll show you exactly how to make it. Hi there! Welcome back to my kitchen. If you'd like more information about how this soup supports your liver health, make sure you check out the link in the description for a YouTube short I made about this topic. Today I have for you a recipe for butternut squash soup for liver health. Right now, I thought we could take a peek at the ingredients for this soup. For this recipe, you'll want enough winter squash to make three to four cups of squash flesh, and we're going to roast this in the oven. Today I have a butternut squash, but I actually prefer some of the other sources like buttercup, kabocha, red kabocha, red curry or blue curry, turban, or sugar pumpkin. So these squash varieties are a little drier and more dense. Now if you have spaghetti squash or acorn squash, I don't recommend those because they're going to be too watery. So it's about texture. I like the dry texture versus the watery texture. Next up, beets. You want to choose red beets to get that beautiful rich orange-red hue in the finished dish. And beets are actually the number one liver supportive food due to their colagogue or bile stimulating effect. Bile is what the body uses to digest fat. And it plays a critical role in managing toxins efficiently in the body. Beets are also anti-inflammatory. And this quality, along with a blood thinning effect, helps to balance out the heavier qualities of the squash in this dish. Next up is celery root, also known as celeriac. And this is a teeny tiny dried out gnarly looking root, which is how they look. And if you don't have this, this also works. Celery root is similar to celery. It has kind of a parsley flavor in addition to the celery, and a mild sweetness. So it's a little sweeter than the regular celery stalk. And the reason we're including this ingredient is to add that light and cutting element to balance out the sweet qualities of the squash. Next up, onions and garlic. So this adds a pungent as well as a sweet quality to the soup. And onions and garlic are also a fantastic source of prebiotic fiber, which is food for your good gut bacteria. Next up is coriander. And this is the whole coriander seed. And I'm going to be using the ground coriander for this soup. Coriander is both bitter and pungent. And while bitter is cooling and pungent is heating, the two together kind of balance each other out to create a neutral thermal quality. And so coriander is one of the best spices that you can use if you are experiencing inflammation, because it has a neutral to cooling quality in the body. I love coriander with any and all root vegetables, and I just love its sweet and woodsy taste. Another great benefit to coriander is that it binds to toxins in the body and helps to usher them out through the urinary tract. Next up is cumin. And these are the cumin seeds. And I'm going to be using the ground cumin or cumin powder. Cumin is another bitter and pungent spice with a little bit more heat than the coriander. And cumin nearly always makes its presence known in a dish. It has a fairly strong flavor. And the way you will know if cumin is in your dish is that you will probably feel really good, because cumin is incredible at supporting digestion. It supports metabolism. Cumin also stimulates peristalsis and helps to move food through the digestive tract. So cumin is another spice that helps to balance out the heaviness of the winter squash. Next up is your spice masala. And I've left this really general. If you have an ayurvedic spice masala such as this one, then go ahead and use that. So in ayurveda, a masala can be designed to support your specific dosha or body type. Or you can also use a yellow curry such as a madras curry or garam masala. And if you don't have any of those, just use more of one of the other spices in this recipe. We will be using turmeric in this recipe, like most of my recipes. And you'll know turmeric for its incredible anti-inflammatory qualities. It is a blood mover, a blood invigorator. It increases circulation and gets things going. So it also has a mild bitter taste, but when you cook it, you hardly taste that bitter at all. So it's a wonderful way to get a little bit of bitter taste into your meals. So the first step to make this is to roast the squash, which means we have to cut this and get it in the oven. Now if you don't want to do that, these days grocery stores do sell prepared butternut squash in cubes. So you can just grab that. You can also use canned pumpkin or squash for this recipe if you like. And if you don't want to roast in the oven, you could also steam. And if you're going to go that route, you could literally just add the squash into the simmering soup with the other vegetables. The reason we're roasting today is to deepen and intensify the flavors. It adds a different element into the soup. All right. So to prepare the squash, we're going to cut off both ends, cut it in half and in half again, using a large sturdy spoon to remove the seeds. Yeah. And then putting the squash pieces onto a roasting tray lined with parchment into the oven at 375. Meanwhile, prepare the garlic and the onion, which are some of the aromatics that are going into this soup. And then the vegetables, the other vegetables, the beets, using a vegetable peeler and glove so my hands don't get all red. I advise that. But if you wash your hands right away, it takes the red off too. Here we have celery root, and I like using a knife because the skins are so gnarly. Just a rough chop is all you need. And celery works just as well. In this case, I've used both celery root and celery. That celery gives a lightening quality to this soup. The squash and the beets are sweet, complex carbs. The celery lightens it up. Here we're starting the soup with onions and garlic that we prepared, getting them nice and brown in the ghee and then adding in the spices. The spices are key to the overall flavor and digestibility of this soup. Make sure you enjoy that wonderful aromatic there before adding the water and the prepared vegetables. We want to simmer that for 25-30 minutes until soft. And meanwhile, the squash comes out of the oven. It is soft and nicely cooked. We want to scoop out the squash from the skins. There's your squash puree. And we add that back into the soup with the vegetables already cooked. Just marry it together for a few minutes. And then we're going to get out our immersion blender and blend the soup until smooth and into a puree. And you're going to want to add water because as you blend everything together, it thickens up. And so add water to thin it out to your desired consistency. Isn't that beautiful? I just love the color of this soup. And of course, finish your seasoning, salt, lime juice, and cilantro. Cilantro adds so much flavor into this soup. Ooh, isn't that beautiful? I just love how gorgeous this soup is going into the bowl. Oh yeah. I think it's time to give this a taste. Yummy. It makes you just want to take bite after bite. And I just love the little bit of crunchiness from the cilantro. It is so good. I feel like I can taste every element in the soup, from the squash to the mild presence of the beets to the celery, adding this like vegetal celery flavor in there. And then just the very, very gentle spices. There's nothing spicy or pungent or overwhelming in this dish. It's just perfectly balanced. And I can even taste the little bit of bitterness from the lime juice. So lime is sour and bitter, but everything is just coming together and making its presence known in the soup. It's so gentle. It's so balancing. It is so lovely. So I hope you loved learning how to make this roasted butternut squash soup. I'm an Ayurvedic nutrition and digestive health coach, and Ayurvedic cooking is really special. And I've just given you a taste of what it's all about. So if you want to learn more about the Ayurvedic qualities of this dish, make sure that you click on the link in the description below and visit my recipe post on the Good Gut Ayurveda website. Now, if you're entirely new to Ayurveda, then the way to get started is to take my DOSHA quiz. This way you'll learn what body type you are and what types of foods are going to be the most supportive for you. I'm going to include a link in the description below. So that's all for today. Thank you for watching. If you want to see more videos like this, make sure you subscribe to my channel right now. That really encourages me. And also leave a comment. Let me know what you thought. Bye for now and until the next time.