Sweet & Creamy Butternut Squash Soup from Disney's Boma

"This recipe is beyond fantastic - it's from Disney's Boma - Flavors of Africa Restaurant at the Animal Kingdom Lodge. There are two versions of this recipe, sweet and savory. This is the sweet version. We always time our visits to this restaurant just to have this incredible soup (they only serve it on certain days)! The chefs were gracious enough to share the recipe with me, and it's an absolute favorite in our family! The soup uses heavy ingredients, but you could try lightening it up with splenda, 2%milk, and half-and-half."
 
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Ready In:
1hr 5mins
Ingredients:
14
Serves:
8
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ingredients

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directions

  • In a small pot, melt the butter and pour over the squash. Season squash with salt and pepper and roast in 325-degree oven for 45 minutes (I use a dutch oven for this recipe, as it transfers easily from the oven to the stove).
  • In a kettle, mix squash with water. Add heavy cream and milk and puree using an immersion blender. Add sugar, ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon, and coriander.
  • Make a slurry with the cornstarch and add to the soup.
  • Add the American cheese and continue mixing until smooth.
  • Adjust seasoning.

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Reviews

  1. I ate at Boma for the first time a couple weeks ago on my trip to Disney World and the waiter encouraged us to try the butternut squash soup. As a big fan of all things pumpkin, my mind was blown tasting this delicious soup. As he described it, "it's like eating liquid pumpkin pie". I rushed to the interwebz and sure enough I found this recipe. I gathered the ingredients and made the soup within about 2 weeks of trying 'the real thing' and I can verify that this is the identical recipe. It's simply amazing. I'm planning on making it to take to the family thanksgiving this year, because it would fit in perfectly.<br/><br/>A couple of notes:<br/>- I was really skeptical about the american cheese ingredient. I've seen some comments that say you MUST put it in, and some that say you MUST leave it out. I decided to follow the recipe the first time and I added the full amount of cheese. Right about when you add the cheese is when the soup really takes on its signature color so I already knew it was a necessary ingredient. My only complaint is that I could taste slightly too much cheese in the soup compared to the official Boma soup. I would recommend you use roughly 3/4 or 5/6 of the amount of cheese the recipe suggests, but DO NOT leave it out. <br/><br/>- Resist the temptation to add more sugar right away. The recipe says "to taste" and I remember the soup as being fairly sweet. I should have waited until the very end to add sugar, but I added a little bit too much throughout the process and it turned out slightly too sweet. The soup needs to be a mix between savory and sweet for it to have that neverending-addiction quality to it. The same thing happened to me with the cinnamon. I added a bit too much early on and later I felt the soup had a little too much cinnamon kick in the back of my throat. Stay with the recommended amount and fight the temptation to add more, at least until the very end.<br/><br/>- The soup somehow changes flavors throughout the cooking process. I'm not sure what it is, but if you taste it at different points the flavors will seem to evolve until what you have right before serving. Thus you shouldn't try to change the recipe if the soup doesn't taste quite right about halfway through.<br/><br/>- I didn't have an "immersion blender" so I used a regular blender. I poured the contents of my pan into the blender over the sink, and then blended and transferred back. It works well enough, but I ended up doing it several times so I can see why they recommend an immersion variety.<br/><br/>- You need to blend the heck out of this soup. Even after baking, the squash has a fibrous chunky quality to it if your blender doesn't sufficiently puree the soup. At Boma, there were NO chunks of squash at the bottom of the bowl - it was very smooth. I ended up having to transfer/blend, transfer/blend several times until the soup was totally smooth. Also, any time you adjust ingredients you will have to re-blend, because the ingredients don't really mix into the soup well if you're just stirring. So avoid adding ingredients after everything is cooking because you will have to blend again.<br/><br/>- As for the texture, I used the suggested amount of corn starch and the soup didn't seem thick enough. I added a bit more, but be careful not to use too much or the soup will have a bit too much thickness. The longer you keep the soup cooking on the stove, the thicker it will get, so keep that in mind as well. You want to keep the soup fairly light because if it's too thick and creamy it will be so rich you won't want to eat very much of it. The soup I had at Boma was so addicting it felt like I could have made a whole meal out of it, but I didn't get quite that same feeling the first time I made it myself. If your soup is too thick, stir in a little bit more milk. If it's too thin, add a bit of cornstarch (you will probably have to re-blend). <br/><br/>- Don't dump out the butter when you take the squash out of the oven. I don't have a dutch oven so I just used an oven-safe pyrex dish and dumped the contents into a soup pan on my stove after it was done baking. I kept all of the butter from the dish rather than throwing it out, and my soup turned out very close to the real thing. It seemed a little ambiguous in the instructions so that's why I'm mentioning it.
     
  2. This was just as delicious as I had hoped, will definitely enjoy this often during the fall and winter months ??????
     
  3. Absolutely delicious, I had it at Boma 5 years ago and I've made it every Thanksgiving and Christmas since then. I'm making it right now as we speak and thought I'd add that I leave out the coriander, the first time I made it, it gave it a bitter taste and without it, it's just perfect! I also don't roast the butternut squash, I let it soften in the butter and some of the water, then purée it with the immersion blender, then add the rest of the ingredients. It's perfect! Also, use fresh ground ginger instead of the powder, it makes a huge difference. Enjoy!
     
  4. I've eaten this at Boma about a dozen times. I never thought to describe it as liquid pumpkin pie, so if you're trying it for the first time, don't be turned off by that description. The recipe works fine without corn starch. And because it is a wonderful soup, you'll probably want to scale everything up by three (x3). GROUND spices must be used, and if freezing or keeping in fridge for a while before first serving, leave out milk and add in upon reheat. I prepared everything in a blender (just like Disney's strawberry soup) and simply heated in microwave. Yummy fall soup.... Oh, comes out of blender thick but becomes more viscous upon heating.
     
  5. Holy crapazoid is this good!!!!! liquid pumpkin pie, heaven on earth. May I just wallow in it? This is a sweet soup. FYI I use two average size butternut squash. I'm not sure, but don't think the measuring for the butternut is correct. But I looked up other recipes and two seemed to be the norm for the average six to eight servings of soup. I used the immersion blender for the first time. Don't ask lol...but yes it's good to keep it fully immersed in the soup...duh. All in all this soup is wonderful. Very forgiving so you can add here and there to get it right where you want it. It woup make a great appetizer soup, as a little goes a long way. But since I like sweet, a whole huge bowl for me please. Thanks this is a keeper.
     
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Tweaks

  1. No coriander....
     

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