Stuology

Tonight’s Dinner: Butternut squash and crab bisque

Nov 19th, 2008By: Mellystu Comments 4

Butternut Squash, Peeled

I love this. I like it so much that I told Mac I was going to bathe in the leftovers. He gave me the look you would expect him to give me.

The photo isn’t of the soup, however. It is a photo of the squash after I peeled it. Doesn’t it look nice? For this recipe, I did want small hunks of butternut squash in the bisque, so that meant I needed to dice my squash and not roast my squash. That meant that I had to peel the squash. I’ve tried it before in the past, and it was painful, swear-worthy task, and most people will tell you to just roast it first so the peel just comes off. I really, really did want diced squash though, as did I in the last dish I used butternut squash in. Luckily for me, I found a painless, easy, swear-word free method of peeling butternut squash.

1) Fill a large stock pot, or in my case, my cast-iron dutch oven with enough water to be able to put in the squash without water spilling over. Make sure this pot has a lid.

2) Bring the pot of water to boil, and then put in the squash. Do not put it in before the water starts boiling.

3) Turn the heat down to low, put on the lid and let the squash cook for about 7-8 minutes. The test is that you can easily poke a skewer though the skin, but not too far into the squash.

4) While the above is cooking, get another large stock pot or bowl and fill it with ice water.

5) After the 7 minutes are up, take the squash out of the hot water and place it in the cold water to stop the cooking. This is the tricky part since it is hot water and the squash is a little unwieldy. My tool of choice was to scoop it up with my large grill spatula and use another large spoon to hold it onto the spatula as I moved it to the ice water pan.

6) After it has cooled for a bit, peel it with a vegetable peeler. You’ll be able to do it with ease. You basically cooked a very small part of the top layer of the squash which loosed the skin.

Now you can dice it with ease.

While I was sitting in the livingroom uploading this photo, the back deck door opened by itself almost half-way. The fresh air smells good, but the breeze is starting to make my feet feel a little chilly. Did I also mention that it opened by itself halfway? Ada was sitting by me playing in “Go Kitty.” She just looked at the door, and then looked at me, and then looked at the door.

Also, as I was about to post this, my coffee pot started grinding beans. Yeah, by itself.