A soup for Halloween and the whole autumn: smooth, velvety pumpkin soup with onion, garlic and a hint of ginger. The pumpkin goes in the oven first, so it caramelises and gets far more flavour than boiled pumpkin. Then you blend everything with stock and a splash of cream. Serve the soup in a hollowed-out pumpkin or with a spider’s web of cream on top and it is a party straight away. A tip: roast the seeds as a crunchy topping.
Pumpkin soup
Pumpkin soup
Method
01
Roast the pumpkin
Preheat the oven to 200 °C. Scoop the seeds out of the pumpkin (keep them for the topping), cut the pumpkin into chunks, toss them with 1 tablespoon of olive oil and the salt and roast them for 30 minutes on a baking tray until soft and dark at the edges.
02
Soften onion and ginger
Heat the rest of the oil in a soup pan over medium heat and soften the onion for 5 minutes until translucent. Add the garlic and ginger and fry for 1 minute.
03
Simmer
Add the roasted pumpkin and the stock, bring to the boil and let the soup simmer gently for 10 minutes.
04
Blend
Blend the soup with a stick blender until smooth. Stir in the cream and season with salt and pepper. If the soup is too thick, add a splash of stock.
05
Serve
Ladle the soup into bowls and make a spider's web with a spiral of cream, pulled through with a skewer. Sprinkle roasted pumpkin seeds on top.
Tips & notes
Use a small orange pumpkin such as Hokkaido (the skin can stay on, it becomes soft) or butternut (remove the skin). Do not use the huge Halloween carving pumpkins: they are watery and have little flavour. The soup is vegetarian if you use vegetable stock. It keeps for 3 days in the fridge and can be frozen (without the cream).
Chef's tip
Roast the pumpkin in the oven instead of boiling it: the edges turn dark and caramelised and the soup gets much more flavour. Add the stock gradually, because some pumpkins contain a lot of moisture. Taste at the end and add a splash of lemon juice if the soup tastes too sweet.
Variations
- Vegan: use coconut milk instead of cream and vegetable stock.
- Spicy: add half a red chilli or 1 teaspoon of curry powder to the onion.
- Spider's web: pull a skewer through a spiral of cream on the soup.
Contains:
Milk
