101 in 1001: Make pumpkin soup

The last time I tried pumpkin soup was about five years ago over a Christmas trip to Austria. Though that particular recipe for pumpkin soup wasn't my favourite, it was still quite nice. I found that recipe didn't do the dish justice. I knew that by including it on my 101 in 1001, I'd end up surfing the internet for a recipe that would suit the taste buds of all of the mouths I was feeding.

I actually took two attempts at making this soup. Mostly because I had a slight fluff up with the measurements of the first batch. I know, the amount of grams to a kilo should be common knowledge, but I day the carved my pumpkin was a long day for both Josh and myself so correct measurement conversions weren't high up on our list of skills.

So long story short, my first attempt only had enough to serve one portion, or two particularly small starters for Chloe and I and has a ridiculously strong taste of oxo cubes which filled the house for the whole evening, leaving a faint hint the next day. The second attempt, however, turned out fine. Although, we found that there was only enough for four portions rather than the six portions that was stated on the recipe I followed (the original recipe can be found here).

 



Going by my second attempt on this recipe, I didn't follow it step by step (clearly I didn't with the first one either but we'll just ignore that minor issue from here on out). So lets get started!

 

Ingredients

 

A thin layer of olive oil to cover the bottom of the sauce pan

1 large onion

1 kg (or as close to 1 kg) of pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and chopped into chunks

6 chicken oxo cubes (any flavour could be used but this was what we always have in)

142ml pot of double cream

A few slices of bread

A handful of pumpkin seeds (use the seeds carved from the pumpkin as it saves you from buying a separate pack of them from the shop and saves you from wasting too much)

 

Method

 

I started off by carving out the pumpkin and chopped it into little chunks. This task is defiantly the part that is most time consuming. The original recipe says that preparation time is 20 minutes but we found that we spent 20 minutes on chopping up the pumpkin alone so I'd allow for about half an hour for prepping. Make sure you weigh your pumpkin chunks, as a whole pumpkin is a lot heavier than your chunks.

 

Next, is the onion. That needs chopping up into small, finely cut pieces. Once you've got it all chopped up, pour yourself a thin layer of olive oil over the bottom of your saucepan and heat it up on a mid to high heat. Now you can cook the onion for up to 5 minutes before adding the pumpkin chunks and cooking for roughly 9 minutes while stirring on occasion, until soft and golden.

 

Because I used store bought stock cubes,  I crumbled each one into the soup before cooking for no more than 10 minutes. Lastly, pour the double cream in, bring to the boil, give it a quick stir and then pop it in the blender. Unfortunately, I don't own a blender so I had to make do with an electric hand whisk. Even still, making it a chunky soup still tasted amazing so I can only imagine how it would taste if we had a blender! I shall have to invest in one soon! Maybe I'll have a look in the Black Friday sales on Amazon or even put it on hold  until the Boxing Day sales.

 

You can butter your bread to serve with your soup and sprinkle your pumpkin seeds over the soup. And there you have it! An oh-so-simple recipe to follow that just tastes divine! You can keep it in the freezer for up to two whole months. Because of the simplicity of the recipe, you can swap ingredients and add certain ingredients. For instance, next time I plan to swap the pumpkin for a butternut squash and add some chilli. Hopefully by then I'll have invested in a blender to get that creamy texture.

 

If you have a go at this recipe, let me know how yours turned out!

 

Charlotte.