This pork squash soup recipe is one of the many excellent byproducts of my friendships. It’s a jacked-up version of a friend’s mom’s recipe for squash soup, which only requires three ingredients: ground pork, shrimp, and squash. I’ve never tried her soup, but my friend said it was perfect. And if it’s good by my friend’s standards, then you know it’s good. So it’s no wonder that my recipe, centred around those three key ingredients, turned out to be so intensely flavorful that it can be described by no word other than umami.
All you need is seven ingredients: squash, pork, shrimp, garlic, shimeji mushrooms, chicken broth, and wakame seaweed. Of course, you can choose to opt out of the mushrooms, chicken broth, and seaweed if you like. However, I find that these three ingredients help to impart a denser and more complex flavour profile.
Hearty Pork Squash Soup Recipe
Ingredients
½ teaspoon olive oil
2 cloves garlic - roughly chopped
1 pound ground pork (minced pork)
3 medium shrimp (prawn) - de-shelled and roughly chopped- 1 cup buttercup squash - skin removed and diced
½ cup mushrooms - shimeji- 1 teaspoon seaweed - wakame
4 cups chicken stock (chicken broth or chicken bouillon) - low-sodium
1 pinch salt
Instructions
- Coat a non-stick pot with half a teaspoon of olive oil and stir-fry the garlic until fragrant.
- Throw in the cup of squash and cover with 1 1/2 cups of low sodium chicken broth.
- Put the lid on the pot, and cook on high.
- Cook, until squash is fork-tender and soup is a murky orange, about 10 minutes. Meanwhile, brown the pork in a non-stick frying pan.
- Add the pork and shimeji mushrooms, and boil for 3 minutes.
- Add the shrimp and wakame seaweed and cook for another 2 minutes.
- Top with croutons (optional).
