Name: Soup Joumou (Squash and Beef Soup)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 2 h 30 min
Total time: 3 h 10 min
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Haitian
Ingredients: 800 g beef shin or chuck; 2 limes; 1 tsp salt; 1 handful parsley; 3 spring onions; 4 cloves garlic; 0.5 green pepper; 4 sprigs thyme; 2 tbsp olive oil; 1.2 kg kabocha or butternut squash; 3 L water; 2 potatoes; 2 carrots; 200 g taro or malanga; 1 turnip; 2 sticks celery; 1 leek; 1 onion; 0.25 head white cabbage; 1 scotch bonnet; 100 g thin pasta (vermicelli or spaghetti); 1 tbsp butter; to taste salt and pepper

Ingredients

6servings

Meat
beef shin or chuck · with some bone if you have it, in large pieces800 g
limes2
salt1 tsp
Épis (seasoning paste)
parsley1 handful
spring onions3
garlic4 cloves
green pepper0.5
thyme4 sprigs
olive oil2 tbsp
Soup
kabocha or butternut squash · giraumon in Haiti1.2 kg
water · 2L for the meat, 1L for the squash3 L
potatoes2
carrots2
taro or malanga · optional200 g
turnip · optional1
celery2 sticks
leek1
onion1
white cabbage0.25 head
scotch bonnet · whole, unbroken1
thin pasta (vermicelli or spaghetti)100 g
butter1 tbsp
salt and pepper to taste

Steps

Rub the beef with the cut limes and the salt, rinse it and drain. Blend the épis ingredients to a rough paste, coat the beef in it and leave for at least an hour. Overnight is better.
⏲ 60 min
Put the beef and all its marinade in a pot with 2L of water and bring to the boil. Skim, then cover and simmer gently for 1 hour 30 minutes, until the meat is tender.
⏲ 90 min
Meanwhile peel the squash, cut it into large pieces and boil it in another pan with 1L of water for 25 minutes. When a chopstick goes straight in, blend it smooth with its cooking water.
⏲ 25 min
Pour the squash puree into the beef pot. Add the potatoes, carrots, taro, turnip, celery, leek and onion in bite-size pieces and the whole scotch bonnet, and simmer for 20 minutes, stirring from the bottom now and then so it does not catch.
⏲ 20 min
Add the cabbage in large pieces and the pasta broken into lengths, and simmer 10-12 minutes until the pasta is cooked.
⏲ 11 min
Fish out the scotch bonnet and stir in the butter. Squeeze in a little more lime juice, season with salt and pepper, and serve hot with bread.
⏲ 2 min

Variations

Without pasta. Some households add it and some do not. Leave it out and add another potato.
With bones. Soup bones simmered with the beef make a richer broth.
Choosing the squash. Kabocha or butternut stands in for Haiti's giraumon. The firmer and less sweet, the better.
The Sunday soup. In some regions it is made every Sunday, not only at New Year.

Tips

Boil the squash separately and blend it smooth. That is the soup's body.
Keep the scotch bonnet whole. In whole and fished out, it leaves aroma without the burn.
Pasta in the last ten minutes. Earlier, it drinks the broth.
Stir from the bottom now and then. A thick soup catches easily.
It is thicker the next day. Loosen it with a little water as you reheat.

More detail and the reasons why (2)

The body is made outside the pot. Colombia's ajiaco thickens by letting one potato collapse in the pot, which is why the order and spacing of its potatoes are the recipe. Soup joumou boils its squash apart and blends it in, so the thickness is settled before anything else goes in, and the other vegetables only have to be given their own cooking times. The meat starts the Haitian way griot does, rubbed with lime and marinated in épis.
From forbidden soup to independence soup. English Wikipedia says that under French rule the enslaved Africans who grew this squash were forbidden to eat it. Since independence on 1 January 1804, soup joumou has been eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner on New Year's Day and into the next day, Ancestors' Day. In 2021 it was added to UNESCO's Representative List of the Intangible Cultural Heritage of Humanity, Haiti's first inscription. It is always served hot, with sliced bread to dip in it.

The basics behind this dish

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