As someone who has written an entire cookbook on soups, I can tell you two things. Well, I could tell you a million things, but I'll limit myself to two. First, the right garnish can turn an ordinary soup into something special.

Second, after a full year of making soup, nothing looks better on a dinner table than a fork.

While my family can fully attest to the latter, the former is a lesson I learned on several occasions when I'd made a soup that seemed "OK," but no matter how many times I tested it, I couldn't make it great, until I added a garnish.

Take split pea soup, for example. It's a basic soup, usually made with split peas, onions, carrots and a ham hock. Maybe broth is added in place of water. Perhaps fresh thyme is used as one more flavor element.

I'm sure there are a million variations, but split pea soup is usually only split pea soup, no matter what you do — unless you garnish it.

Somehow, the addition of buttery pumpernickel croutons — or, better yet, buttery pumpernickel croutons mixed with small browned cubes of ham — turn a simple soup into something memorable.

Chili is another case in point. If you're anything like me, a good bowl of chili doesn't exist unless it's topped with a dollop of sour cream, a generous handful of shredded cheese and a sprinkling of diced red or green onions.

This week's roasted butternut squash soup is another example. The soup itself is simple: roasted squash and onions cooked with butter, sage and broth, all puréed until silky smooth.

What's not to love about a soup that's so easy and tastes so good?

Still, it has the potential to be great, and that's not hard to do. It takes only a few minutes to turn the sage-infused melted butter into a sage-infused brown butter, but the time is well spent.

Brown butter has a deep, nutty flavor that pairs beautifully with the sweet roasted squash. In this case, I decided to start the soup by browning the butter and simply reserved a portion to use at the end as a garnish. Easy.

To play on the nuttiness of the butter, I chopped toasted hazelnuts, and, since I was adding a little cream to the soup, I lightly whipped a little more and folded in the nuts. Garnish No. 2.

Of course, since I was already chopping up the hazelnuts, I decided to save a bit to sprinkle over the top of the soup. Garnish No. 3.

It took very little time to make these garnishes, but it turned a good basic soup into a spectacular bowl, fit for my holiday dinner table. Once you try it, you'll want it on yours, too.

Meredith Deeds is a cookbook author and food writer from Edina. Reach her at meredith@meredithdeeds.com. Follow her on Twitter ­at @meredithdeeds.