Rob Carson: Hi, my name is Carson. I am a radio personality also a nationally syndicated comedy writer. I have been cooking since I was in High School working as a fry cook at Forson's truck stop at I-80, and also I have been cooking for friends and other chefs and doing cooking demos for about 15 years. My goal is to demystify things that you may have been afraid to try and bring couples together and really break the bar when it comes to entertaining. What we are going to do today is one of my favorite savoury soups and it is incredibly, incredibly simple to make. It is a Butternut Squash Bisque and you are going to love it.

So let's get started. I have got one large butternut squash that I have peeled and cored and diced, made it into relatively small pieces, nothing really tiny. Over here I have got about half as many white potatoes and I have done the same things. This is about two and a half potatoes. You want about half of the squash in potatoes.

One large yellow onion finely chopped; two tablespoons of butter, you can use a little more because I love butter and paprika about a teaspoon of paprika. Over here, about a quart and a half of chicken broth, these are all you are going to need for Butternut Squash Bisque and we are going to head over and get that heated up.

I am heating up my butter right now, when the butter gets melted a little bit I am going to add this onion and we are going to saut the onion until it becomes translucent. Generally, whenever you are cooking chefs always say, "Saut the onion till it is translucent," which means basically, it's soft and you will be able to puree it later in your food processor.

So I am going to get that started, I going to add these onions, or this onion I should say, it's a one large yellow onion. We are going to cook this for about five minutes. Few things in life smell as good as a fried onion I think you will have to agree with me on that, I think they should actually make cologne out of it, okay maybe not. But it's a wonderful smell. It will fill your whole house with a great scent. A lot of times when you are cooking a soup you will add a little bit of salt and a little bit of pepper; I am going to leave those out of it right now just because I am using a chicken broth that already has salt in it. I don't want to over salt anything. You really don't need the pepper for this either. This tends to be a little more sweet soup.

So we are going to keep the seasonings to a minimum. Now I told you two tablespoons of butter, if you want to use a little more that's fine too. What I want to tell you right now, don't use fake butter alright? Life is too short for fake butter and low fat cheese, enjoy the flavor, unless the ingredients or unless the recipes calls for canola oil or something like that, use the real stuff. We are almost done with our onion here. I don't want to brown the onion, I just want to cook it until it's soft and translucent as I mentioned then we are going to add our chicken broth so I am going to go ahead and add some chicken broth here. I am going to start with a quart; I have got a quart and a half, I am just going to add this here and make a good mess out of my stove while I am at it.

We will bring this to a boil obviously. This is going to make enough soup for 6-8 people, I am going to wait for this broth and the onion to come to a boil, the onion is going to continue to soften. We are going to let the squash and the potatoes boil for about 15-20 minutes until they are soft. Don't make them mushy and don't overcook them. Then we are going add them to the food processor and make some soup. Alright, so these have been boiling about 15 minutes, it is starting to soften up, the butternut squash softens a little bit sooner than the potatoes. But make sure that both of them are soft when you put them in the food processor.

I am going to go ahead and add the paprika; that was about one teaspoon of paprika by the way. It's not just for your mom's deviled eggs anymore. I am not going to use all of the broth, it depends on how soupy you want it and how creamy and rich you want it so I am going to use a good share of it and then I am going to finish it with half and half. I am going to go ahead and put some broth in over here and then we are going to blend it. Now I didn't pulse it, I put it on full because I want to it to be really creamy and I really want to puree everything so it's nice and smooth. There you go, that's the creamy consistency that I wanted.

I have got about a cup of half and half; you can use heavy creamy if you want; don't over do it with the cream. You really don't want to completely take the flavor away and dilute it with too much dairy product. But you do want the creamy consistency of the cream. I love the colors and just a look of good butternut squash bisque, it's just pretty. The heat is on medium right now. You don't really need to bring to a boil again. You are done cooking it. You just need to warm it up to the temperature you want to serve it at. Don't over do it, don't bring to a boil with dairy product in it because you will mess it up. Alright guys, we have just made butternut squash bisque. Now what I am going to do here is obviously, I am going to set up the courses. You don't need two if you are doing courses, you don't fill the bowl to the brim, just about a half a bowl is fine, you don't want to spoil their appetites, but you want to articulate them a little bit. So I am going to serve butternut squash bisque on the salad plate. Now you can add some chives on top, fresh chopped chives or you can actually leave whole strips of them and do a decorative appearance on top and also, if you would like you can ask your guest if they would like a little bit of fresh cracked pepper.

There it is guys; very simple and it will make you a rock star in your home - Butternut Squash Bisque.