Roast Pumpkin Soup

Halloween’s coming up and that means it’s pumpkin time! In the world of carved pumpkins, the inner flesh is useless, but there’s no reason to discard all this delicious vegetable. So here’s something you can do with the leftover pumpkin sitting on your kitchen counter. Warming, smooth and healthy – this is a really quick and tasty lunch. Soup is also really good for freezing – so if you have more pumpkin soup than you can deal with in one go, pop it into a pot and bung it in the freezer until you fancy some more.

Here I’ve suggested roasting the pumpkin first as this will make it soft enough to get out of the skins, but if you’re using flesh from a carved pumpkin – meaning that it’s already out of the skin, you can use it just like that. This also works really well with butternut squash, so if you’re not a pumpkin family you can give that a go instead. My Mum’s really into gardening, and at the moment we have several squash plants taking over the garden, so soup is a great way of turning all this luscious veg into a meal that can be stored away and saved for a later day.

Recipe

Serves 4

Time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

• 1 tbsp Vegetable oil
• 1 Small red onion, roughly chopped
• 1 Small white onion, roughly chopped
• 2 Small pumpkins (about 1.5kg)
• 1 Large carrot, peeled
• 2 Medium baking potatoes, peeled
• 2 Chicken stock cubes dissolved in 4 cups of boiling water
• Salt and pepper to season
• 125ml Single cream
• 4 Rashers streaky bacon
• 1/2 tsp dried chilli flakes
• Fresh basil to serve

Method

1. Pre-heat the oven to 180˚C. Halve the pumpkins and remove the seeds from the middle with a spoon. Drizzle with oil and then wrap each half in tin foil. Put them into roasting tins and then roast in the oven for 15-20 minutes, until softened. Set aside to cool.
2. Meanwhile, put the oil into a large saucepan and add the chopped onion. Cook over a medium heat until the onions have begun to caramelise.
3. Chop carrot and potatoes into chunks. Scoop the flesh out of the cooled, roasted pumpkins and add this, the chopped potatoes, and the chopped carrot to the onion. Pour in the chicken stock and bring to the boil. Leave to simmer for 15-20 minutes until the vegetables are tender.
4. Meanwhile heat a grill. Put the bacon on a grill pan and heat under the grill for 5-10 minutes, turning over a few times, until crispy all over. Take out from under the grill and set aside for later.
5. Puree the vegetables once ready with a hand blender, add the chilli flakes and season to taste with the salt and pepper.
6. Pour in half the cream and stir to mix. Pour the soup into bowls and drizzle with the rest of the cream. Chop the bacon into strips with scissors and sprinkle over the soup. Garnish with fresh basil and serve with buttered bread.

Thanks for reading!

Emma x