Slow Cooker Butternut Squash Soup

This recipe for Slow Cooker Butternut Squash Soup is actually vegan but you don’t have to be following a vegan diet to fall in love with it. One of the secrets to its delicious flavor is using coconut milk versus dairy milk, which I’ve always used even though I’ve never been vegan. Read on for the easy way to make this warming winter soup in your Crock Pot or slow cooked in your Instant Pot.

Slow Cooker Butternut Squash Soup

One of the reasons that this soup is so easy to make is you have lots of options based on the countertop appliances you own. Have a Crock Pot? Great, you can make this soup in it. Don’t have a slow cooker but an Instant Pot instead? Great. You can make this soup using the slow cooking setting on your Instant Pot.

Like so many slow cooker recipes, you’ll add all the ingredients to the crock, set it and forget it. The slow cooking happens while you can be busy doing other things. If you need the soup done fairly quickly, you can put the Crock Pot on high. In three to four hours, it will be ready. Or you can try our recipe for stovetop butternut squash soup. It’s done in under an hour.

Regardless of which way you cook the soup — Crock Pot or slow cooked in the Instant Pot — you’ll want to reach for your immersion blender as a final step. It’s an easier and safer method of blending hot soup. Sure, you could pour it into a traditional blender, pulse and then return to the cooker. But you risk spilling and, more importantly, burning yourself. So, just don’t use that method and go for an immersion blender instead.

Ingredients Overview

Step-by-Step Instructions

Start by peeling and cubing the butternut squash, if you’re working with fresh squash.

Peel the onion and quarter it. Peel the garlic cloves.

Add the olive oil to the crock.

Add the cubed butternut squash to the crock.

Add the quartered onion and garlic to the crock.

Pour vegetable broth and coconut milk over the vegetables. Then sprinkle in the ground cumin, ground coriander, ground turmeric, salt and black pepper to the slow cooker.

Stir until all the ingredients are well combined.

Cook in the slow cooker for 5-6 hours on low or 3-4 hours on high, until the butternut squash is tender.

Use an immersion blender to blend everything until the mixture becomes smooth and creamy.

Ladle into bowls and serve hot. Garnish it with a drizzle of coconut milk or a sprinkle of ground black pepper.

Notes

You can use fresh butternut squash to make this soup. But if you don’t have any, you can always use precut squash. My supermarket has this in the produce aisle. Another option is frozen butternut squash that you froze yourself or got in the freezer section.

There are a fair amount of spices in this soup recipe. However, feel free to experiment with adding curry, which I think pairs perfectly with coconut milk. It will give your recipe a slight South Asian flavor.

What makes this soup vegan is the fact that you’re using coconut milk and vegetable broth. You can always use cream instead of coconut milk or chicken broth instead of vegetable broth if keeping it vegan doesn’t matter. If you want to keep it vegetarian, use either coconut milk or cream — chef’s choice — but definitely don’t swap out vegetable broth for chicken broth.