So squash soup never sounded like a good idea to me, until my sister made a pot and served it up to family while visiting. I was hooked! When I started canning again, I just HAD to figure out how to can this delightfully tangy and savory soup!

I usually make this without the creamed corn, simply because I rarely have creamed corn in the house!

Butternut Squash and Bacon Soup garnished with sour cream. Photo kindly provided by Tammy Hardt.

 

Butternut Squash and Bacon Soup

• 2 butternut squash (about 2 pounds each), peeled, seeded and cut in 1-inch chunks
• 1 onion, diced
• 4 ribs celery, chopped
• 1 apple, chopped
• 1/2 teaspoon Redmond Seasoning Salt
• 1/2 teaspoon curry powder
• black pepper, to taste
• 2 1/2 cups chicken stock, or more, to taste
• Water as needed to keep moist.

Cook until veggies are soft - you can roast in the oven, pressure cook, crock pot them, or cook them in a pot on the stove.

Puree the veggies. Add water if you need to, so that it has the consistency you like (go a little thin for canning).

• 1 pkg cream cheese, well softened (you can microwave it for a minute to really soften it)

Add cream cheese to part of the soup and puree (I did this in a blender, put about 3 cups of the soup into the blender, added the cream cheese and blended till smooth), then add that back into the soup and stir it in.

• 1 lb bacon, cooked diced, fat reserved (or ham and more butter)
• 2 cans creamed corn - OPTIONAL (or 1 can whole kernel corn, with liquid, run in the blender for a bit, just to break up the kernels but not puree them - you want a bit of texture)
• 1 tsp dried parsley
• 1 stick butter (1/2 cup)

Add the rest of the ingredients to the soup, including bacon fat, heat through again to meld flavors.

This can be canned, the cream cheese will hold up well. Sour cream may be substituted if serving fresh.

A colorful hash that fills you up, for breakfast or dinner. If Pajamas can go to Wal-Mart, surely they can go to the dinner table too!

Diced potatoes
Chopped corned beef (raw or cooked)
Diced onion
Diced celery
Shredded carrot
Chopped cabbage
Diced green pepper
Diced red pepper
Diced tomatoes (add at the end after everything else is crispy)
Butter or bacon grease, lard, coconut oil, whatever you have.

Optional: A few eggs to break over the top and stir in at the end, and cook until the eggs are set.

Hash has no real recipe. It was originally a dish made up of leftovers, plus other odds and ends added in. Heavy on potatoes, heavy on the corned beef. Enough fat to fry it well and keep it from sticking hard. Good hash has a nice crispy crust on the food.

Just toss a good amount of fat into the skillet, and then add your meat and veggies. Let sit. DON'T stir too much, especially at first. A lid helps for the first 10-15 minutes of cooking time. The longer it cooks, the faster it cooks. Set the burner on medium-high, and you can go about your business in the kitchen, checking it every 5 minutes or so, and flipping the food over. After about the second or third flip, you need to check more often.

You can throw in parsnips, jicama, turnips, celeriac, or some of those odd root vegetables that people harvest from their back yards (sunchokes, daylilly roots, oca, salsify, or edible weed roots). You can even put in chopped kale or spinach or collards, or other garden or weedy greens. Plaid Pajamas is just hash that has a lot of colors in it.

If you need it to be low carb, then substitute something else for the potatoes. If you need it to be faster to prepare, then you can use canned potatoes and canned corned beef, or frozen hash browns and frozen peppers and onion.

I have canned hash. No, it is not recommended by the government. No, I don't care that it is not, I can it for the meat time. Just press the raw ingredients into jars, tightly, and pressure can for the time that the meat calls for (I would not do it with cooked, it packs too densely, but raw does not). I use raw corned beef so it makes enough broth to almost fill the jars.

A Coddiwomple Farm Original Recipe!