This savory Roasted Acorn Squash Soup with Garlic and Herbs makes for a cozy meal as the weather gets chilly. The soup also makes a nice first course. We enjoyed the acorn squash soup with a St. Innocent Pinot Noir from the Willamette Valley, as part of the Wine Pairing Weekend focus on pairings with Oregon wines.
Inspiration for recipe and pairing
This month, the Wine Pairing Weekend writers group is exploring pairings with Oregon wines. I quickly honed in on making something to go with a Willamette Valley Pinot Noir, one of my favorite wine categories. (although I did also try another interesting wine getting ready for this event…the skin contact Pinot Gris described in this Instagram post)
Sure, a pairing with salmon or pork tenderloin would have worked nicely, as our wine bottle suggested. But I’ve done a lot of variations of both of those recipes. I’m sure the Willamette Pinot we opened would be great with this salmon with mushrooms or the pork tenderloin pasta recipe.
But we had an acorn squash from our local CSA vegetable share waiting to be used. So I started envisioning a roasted acorn squash soup, with ingredients such as sage and Parmesan cheese added that would enhance the Pinot pairing. Some cannellini beans made it a substantial soup suited for for a main course and pairing with Pinot Noir.
The result was a delicious Roasted Acorn Squash Soup with Garlic and Herbs that we will definitely make again! The soup definitely works as a main course, but you could also serve it as a starter. Skipping the beans would make it a bit lighter as a first course.
This recipe is plant strong any way you prepare it. Vegetable stock makes it vegetarian, and skipping the cheese or using nondairy would make it vegan.
Wine pairing
We opened a bottle of the 2022 St. Innocent Villages Cuvée Pinot Noir ($40, 13.5% ABV) to pair with the roasted acorn squash soup. The wine is medium to dark red in the glass. Prunes, black cherry and leather on the nose.
On the palate, this Pinot Noir has cherry fruit along with notes of cocoa and allspice. A nice long finish. The bottle suggests pairing this Pinot with full-flavored, medium weight foods such as grilled salmon and pork tenderloin. Those options certainly sound great, but I liked it with our acorn squash soup, too!
I’d say the addition of Parmesan cheese and cannellini beans gave the soup enough heft to work with this medium bodied red wine. The Pinot also has complexity to match the herbs and roasted garlic flavors. Overall I would call this pairing a definite winner that I would recommend trying!
This Pinot is a blend of grapes from three highly regarded Willamette vineyards: Shea Vineyard (39%), Temperance Hill Vineyard (29%) and Freedom Hill Vineyard (32%). Most of the St. Innocent Pinot Noirs are single vineyard wines.
We first tasted this wine at Berman’s, a local wine shop in Lexington, Massachusetts. The distributor rep explained that they hadn’t made this Cuvée for several years, but brought it back with this bottling.
The wine was made in small stainless steel and Burgundy oak, with natural fermentation. The St. Innocent Pinot is then aged for 12 months in French oak, 8% new.
About the winery
St. Innocent Winery is located just south of Salem in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. The winery was founded by Mark Vlossak in 1988. He had an early exposure to the wine industry, as his father was a wine educator and importer. Wine tasting was a regular part of dinners growing up!
St. Innocent sources grapes from some of Willamette’s top vineyards, as Mark sought out those distinctive terroir and sense of place. In addition to the three vineyards in the Cuvée, they also make Pinot Noir from Momtazi and Zenith Vineyards. In 2018, St. Innocent purchased and planted its own vineyard, Enchanted Way.
The winery offers a variety of options for visitors. You can enjoy tastings of the wine along with cuisine that pairs with it. Visit the website for more details.
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Roasted Acorn Squash Soup with Garlic and Herbs
This savory Roasted Acorn Squash Soup with Garlic and Herbs has enough heft to make for a cozy meal as the weather gets chilly. You can also serve it as a first course as part of an elegant fall dinner.
- Prep Time: 10 mins
- Cook Time: 1 hr 15 mins
- Total Time: 1 hr 25 mins
- Yield: 5 servings 1x
- Category: soup
- Method: stove top and roasting
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 1 medium to large acorn squash, cut in half and seeds removed
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 1 head garlic
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 to 3 carrots, peeled and chopped
- 4 cups vegetable or chicken stock
- 1 bay leaf
- ½ teaspoon dried thyme
- 1 tablespoon fresh sage, chopped; or ½ teaspoon dried sage
- 1 can of cannellini beans, 14.5 ounces, drained and rinsed
- 2 tablespoons Parmesan cheese
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400 degrees.
- Prepare the garlic for roasting. Cut the root end off the head of garlic, exposing the bottom of the garlic cloves. Drizzle exposed cloves with 1 tablespoon of the olive oil. Season with salt and pepper to taste. Wrap the garlic in aluminum foil, and place in the oven to roast. It will take approximately 45 minutes to roast to the point where the roast garlic is soft and can easily be squeezed out of the skin. When ready, set the roasted garlic aside to cool.
- Roast the acorn squash along with the garlic. After cutting the squash and removing seeds, drizzle one tablespoon of the olive oil on over the squash flesh. Place the squash flesh side down on a baking sheet. Bake for approximately 35 minutes, until the squash is soft. When ready, the skin will pierce easily when poked with a fork. Put aside to cool.
- Start cooking other ingredients after the squash has been roasting for about 25 minutes, heat the remaining tablespoon of oil in a large pot on medium heat. Add the onion and sauté for about 5 minutes until it starts getting soft. Stir in the carrots, and sauté for a few more minutes.
- Add the stock to the soup pot along with the bay leaf, and stir to combine. Simmer for about 15 minutes so that the carrots get soft.
- Scoop in the squash: After the squash has cooled and the soup has simmered about 15 minutes, scoop the acorn squash flesh from the shell. Add the squash into the soup and stir vigorously to combine it thoroughly. Squeeze the roasted garlic out of the skin and stir it into the soup. Then add the sage and thyme. Simmer for about 15 minutes more.
- Finish the soup: After about 30 minutes of total simmering, stir in the cannellini beans. Simmer another 5 minutes. Remove the soup from the heat. Then purée the soup to a consistent creamy texture, using an immersion blender if you have one. Alternatively, you can transfer the soup into a food processor or blender in batches to purée. Stir in the Parmesan cheese and salt and pepper to taste.
- Serve and enjoy! Serve topped with a bit of extra Parmesan cheese, and optional croutons. Or serve it with some nice crusty bread…and some Oregon Pinot Noir if you are so inclined!
Notes
- Use vegetable stock to make this vegetarian; and skip the cheese (or use non-dairy) to make it vegan.
- If serving this as a starter, you might choose to skip the beans to make it a bit lighter.
More pairings with Oregon Wines
Be sure to check out these articles from the Wine Pairing Weekend writers about pairings with Oregon wines!
- Wendy from A Day In The Life on The Farm is sharing “A Fall Celebration of Oregon Food and Wine“
- Culinary Cam is “Circling Back to Our Favorite Oregonian Pinot Noirs“.
- Linda from My Full Wine Glass writes about “Beyond Willamette: Oregon’s other wine regions“.
- Martin from ENOFYLZ Wine Blog is “Pairing 2020 Vino Vasai Cabernet Sauvignon with Hearty Beef Nilaga“.
- On Crushed Grape Chronicles, Robin is sharing “Rogue Valley Amphora Grenache from Upper Five and Grilled London Broil with chocolate BBQ Sauce“
- Deanna from Wineivore talks about “Pairing Organic Ken Wright Pinot Noirs from Williamette Valley, Oregon“
- On Wine Predator…Gwendolyn Alley you will find “Fall 4 Biodynamic Oregon Wines: Brooks Riesling, Cowhorn Viognier, Troon Rose, Montinore PN + Menu“
- Terri from Our Good Life shares “Unveiling the Perfect Pairing: Exploring the Flavors of Oregon Pinot Noir and Salmon“
Camilla Mateo Mann
I have been massacring winter squash like they are going out of season…even though the season is just starting. I will definitely add this pairing to our list to try in the next few month.
Cooking Chat
I think this is actually my first squash recipe of the season!
MARTIN D REDMOND
Thanks for hosting event David! Great looking pairing. We hosting some friends who don’t eat red meat for “Come Over October” next week and I may try your Salmon and Mushroom recipe. It looks tasty!
Linda
This squash soup (with Parmesan cheese and Cannelloni beans to bring the heft) sounds amazing! So in my wheelhouse and a definite must for pairing with Pinot Noir or another light-bodied red. Thanks so much!
Terri Steffes
I love making soups and I think this one sounds fallish and delicious. I cannot wait to try it. I have that wine, the St. Innocent, I believe in my storage.
Cooking Chat
Great! I really enjoyed the pairing.