Copycat Costco Butternut Squash Soup

Costco’s butternut squash soup has a small, devoted following, and if you’ve ever gone back for it in October and found the shelf empty, you know the problem. The brand changes almost every year — AUGA, Eatiful, Pacific Foods, Imagine — but the soup itself has stayed remarkably consistent: butternut squash and sweet potato blended smooth with coconut milk, warmed up with ginger, garlic, and onion. No dairy, no cream, and a texture that somehow still coats the back of a spoon.

This copycat gets you there in about 25 minutes in the Instant Pot, and you can make it any month of the year.

What Makes the Costco Version Different

This matters, because most butternut squash soup recipes online are chasing a different target.

The Panera-style soup — the one everybody makes — leans sweet and autumnal: apple cider, curry powder, pumpkin puree, cinnamon. Lovely soup, completely different animal. (If that’s the one you’re after, I have a copycat Panera Autumn Squash Soup already.)

The Costco version goes the other direction. It’s savory-forward, gently warmed by fresh ginger rather than baking spices, and the creaminess comes entirely from coconut milk. The sweet potato is the part most people miss — it’s not a filler, it’s what gives the soup that deep orange color and the velvety body that squash alone can’t produce. Skip it and you’ll get something thinner and paler that tastes almost right but never quite lands.

Why You’ll Love This Recipe

It’s dairy-free without trying to be. No substitutions, no compromises. The coconut milk is the point, not a workaround.

It’s cheaper than the tub. A five-pack runs around $14 at Costco. This batch costs a few dollars and makes more.

It freezes beautifully. No dairy means no separating or graininess when you thaw it. This is the rare cream soup you can genuinely batch and freeze.

The Instant Pot does the hard part. Pressure cooking breaks down both the squash and the sweet potato to the point where an immersion blender turns them glassy-smooth in about thirty seconds.

Ingredients Needed

Full measurements are in the printable recipe card at the bottom of the post.

• Butternut squash — peeled, seeded, and cut into roughly 1-inch cubes. Pre-cut squash works perfectly here and saves you the worst ten minutes of this recipe. Costco sells it, fittingly.
• Sweet potato — one medium, peeled and cubed. Don’t skip this. It’s the structural difference between this soup and every other butternut squash soup.
• Yellow onion — diced. Builds the savory base.
• Garlic — fresh cloves, minced. Powder works in a pinch but you lose some depth.
• Fresh ginger — grated. This is the flavor that makes people say “oh, that’s the Costco one.” Ground ginger is a distant second; use fresh if you can find it.
• Vegetable broth — keeps it vegan. Chicken broth works if you’re not worried about that.
• Full-fat coconut milk — canned, not the carton kind from the refrigerated aisle. The carton stuff is too thin and the soup will taste watery. Shake the can before opening.
• Olive oil — for sautéing.
• Salt and black pepper — season at the end, after blending, when you can actually taste the finished product.

Optional garnishes: toasted pumpkin seeds, a swirl of extra coconut milk, a crack of black pepper, crispy fried sage.​​

How To Make Copycat Costco Butternut Squash Soup

Step 1: Sauté the aromatics. Set your Instant Pot to Sauté on Normal. Add the olive oil, then the diced onion. Cook for 3 to 4 minutes until it turns translucent and loses its raw edge. Add the garlic and ginger and cook one minute more, just until fragrant — don’t let the garlic brown.

Step 2: Add the vegetables. Stir in the cubed butternut squash and sweet potato, tossing to coat everything in the aromatic oil.

Step 3: Deglaze. Pour in a splash of the broth and scrape the bottom of the pot with a wooden spoon. Any stuck-on onion left down there will trigger the Burn notice under pressure. Ten seconds of scraping saves you a headache.

Step 4: Pressure cook. Add the rest of the broth. Lock the lid, set the valve to Sealing, cancel Sauté, and cook on High Pressure for 8 minutes.

Step 5: Release. Let it release naturally for 10 minutes, then flip the valve to Venting for the rest. The natural release matters — a hard quick release on a pot of starchy liquid can sputter.

Step 6: Blend. Use an immersion blender right in the pot until completely smooth. Give it longer than feels necessary; the difference between “pretty smooth” and “Costco smooth” is about forty-five seconds of extra blending. If you’re using a countertop blender, work in batches and vent the lid.

Step 7: Add the coconut milk. Stir it in off the heat. Adding it before pressure cooking dulls the flavor and can cause it to break.

Step 8: Season and serve. Taste now, not earlier. Add salt and pepper until the sweetness sharpens into something savory. Ladle into bowls and top with pumpkin seeds or a swirl of coconut milk.

Recipe Variations

• Spicier: A pinch of cayenne or a small knob of red curry paste added with the garlic.
• Roasted version: Roast the squash and sweet potato at 425°F for 25 minutes before adding them to the pot. More work, deeper flavor.
• Thai-leaning: Add a stalk of bruised lemongrass during pressure cooking and finish with lime juice.
• Not dairy-free: Swap heavy cream for the coconut milk. It’s good — just no longer the Costco flavor.
• Extra protein: Stir in a scoop of red lentils before pressure cooking. They dissolve completely and add body.
• Stovetop: Same steps in a Dutch oven, simmering 20 to 25 minutes until the vegetables are fork-tender.

Pro Tips

It’s better on day two. The ginger settles in overnight.

Cut everything the same size. Uneven cubes cook unevenly, and the underdone pieces are what leave you with a grainy blend.

Shake the coconut milk can. It separates on the shelf. Unshaken, you’ll pour in a slug of solid fat and a puddle of water.

Don’t over-thin it. If the soup looks too thick right after blending, wait. It loosens as the coconut milk goes in. Add broth only after that, a splash at a time.

Too thin? Simmer on Sauté with the lid off for a few minutes to reduce.

Salt does the heavy lifting. This soup tastes flat until it’s properly salted, then suddenly tastes like the real thing. If yours seems like it’s missing something, it’s almost always salt.

Making It In The Slow Cooker

If you’d rather set it and forget it, this soup adapts to a Crock-Pot with almost no loss. Sauté the onion, garlic, and ginger in a skillet first — it’s an extra pan, but skipping it leaves the onion tasting raw and washed out no matter how long the soup cooks, and thirty seconds of ginger in hot oil does something you can’t get any other way. Scrape that into the slow cooker along with the squash, sweet potato, and broth, then cook on Low for 6 to 7 hours or High for 3 to 4, until a fork slides through the squash with no resistance. Blend it smooth right in the crock with an immersion blender, then stir in the coconut milk at the very end and season. Adding the coconut milk at the start is the one mistake to avoid here — over that many hours it separates and turns slightly grainy, and you can’t blend it back together. One note on liquid: slow cookers don’t evaporate the way a pot on the stove does, so start with about half a cup less broth than the recipe calls for and thin it after blending if it needs it.

FAQ

Which Costco soup is this copying? Costco rotates brands, but the butternut squash soups they carry share the same core: butternut squash and sweet potato with coconut cream, ginger, garlic, and onion. This recipe targets that profile rather than one specific label, so it holds up whichever brand is on the shelf this year.

Can I use frozen butternut squash? Yes. Don’t thaw it, and cut the pressure cook time to 6 minutes. Frozen squash releases extra water, so hold back about a quarter cup of broth.

Is this vegan? As written, yes — vegetable broth and coconut milk, no dairy anywhere.

Can I use light coconut milk? You can, but the soup won’t have the same body. If it’s what you have, add an extra half cup of sweet potato to compensate.

Why is my soup grainy? Almost always underblended, occasionally undercooked squash. Blend longer first; if that doesn’t fix it, the vegetables needed more time.

How long does it keep? Five days refrigerated in an airtight container, three months frozen. Leave headspace in the container. Reheat gently and stir — it may look separated when it thaws, but it comes back together.

Can I make it in a slow cooker? Yes — 6 to 7 hours on Low or 3 to 4 on High, with the coconut milk stirred in at the end. Full instructions are in the slow cooker section above.