Roasted Pumpkin Soup

This creamy, full of flavour Roasted Pumpkin Soup is sure to become a favourite with your family as it is with mine. It’s a very simple soup to make as everything is roasted together with the pumpkin, all on the one oven tray. So easy!

Roasting the pumpkin and other vegetables really intensifies their flavour and the beauty of this recipe is that EVERYTHING is roasted together on one oven tray, making this a very easy and flavoursome version of this popular and healthy soup.

While the vegetables are roasting, you can go off and do something else. No need for constant stirring or worrying that something is going to boil over. Once the vegetables are roasted and soft, you simply put them all in a food processor or blender (or you can use a stick blender), and purée until smooth. Then the pumpkin purée is added to the stock, reheated together and it’s ready! So quick, easy and delicious.

The addition of potato and sweet potato gives this soup a lovely velvety texture that is thicker than if you just used all pumpkin. If you don’t have these though, you can still make this soup with just pumpkin. I would add another 400-500g of pumpkin in this case. It will still be creamy and delicious.

The curry powder is my secret ingredient…shhh! Once the soup is made, you won’t really even know it’s in there but it adds another level of flavour and complexity to the dish. I often add up to 3 teaspoons of curry powder to this soup if I want more curry flavour.

This soup can easily be made vegan, by replacing the butter with an extra tablespoon of olive oil and using vegetable stock and vegan friendly toppings (some suggestions below).

I hope you enjoy my version of this family favourite as much as we do.

If you like this soup recipe, or looking for other soup ideas, check out my Roasted Tomato Soup recipe.

About The Ingredients:

• Pumpkin – you can use any variety, but my recommendation for soups are Kent Pumpkin (also known as Jap Pumpkin, Kabocha, Japanese Pumpkin) or Butternut Pumpkin (Butternut Squash) as both have very creamy flesh when cooked.
• Potato and Sweet Potato (kumara) – this gives the soup a lovely thick consistency. If you prefer or only have pumpkin, then just increase the amount of pumpkin from 1.5 kilos to 2 kilos.
• Curry Powder – I have used store-bought curry powder so use any brand you prefer – mild works well for this soup but feel free to add a hot one if you like a little heat.

Method/Tips

This really is a very simple soup to make. The only advice I would give is to make sure the vegetables are all nice and soft when you take them out of the oven.

Stirring the vegetables half-way through the cooking time helps them to all cook evenly and it’s at this stage you add the butter to the tray to add more flavour into the vegetables. I recommend that you check the vegetables 5 minutes before the cooking time as everyone’s ovens are different and yours might cook them quicker or slower than the recipe states. Just make sure they are beautifully soft before you remove them, especially the potatoes, carrots and sweet potato as they take longer to cook than the pumpkin, which is why the recipe states that you chop these vegetables into smaller pieces than the pumpkin. We don’t want any hard pieces of vegetables bits in our soup!

In the photos above you can see that the potato cubes etc are a smaller size to the pumpkin pieces – this means everything will cook at the same time in the oven.

To Serve/Suggestions

This soup can be made the day before. Often things like soup, can taste even better the next day. It will keep for 3-4 days in the fridge in an airtight container.

I sometimes make a double batch as this soup freezes beautifully for up to 3 months.

Toppings:

Delicious served as is, but adding a topping or even just a swirl of cream, coconut cream or a dollop of sour cream/creme fraiche, finishes this soup off beautifully. Serve the soup with your favourite bread, rolls, garlic bread or cheesy bread and dinner is sorted! Here are some topping suggestions:

• Crispy Bacon – Chop the bacon into small pieces and fry in a dry pan until starting to get crispy. If you like, you can pour the bacon fat into the soup for added flavour. Sprinkle some bacon onto the top of your soup, add chopped parsley or chives and a swirl of cream (pictured).
• Crispy Lentils are delicious also. Drain and rinse a tin of lentils. Pat them dry with a paper towel or clean tea towel to get them as dry as you can (or dry fry them in the frying pan giving them a shake until they are dry). Add a teaspoon of olive, a pinch of curry powder or spices of your choice and salt and fry over medium/high until lentils look nutty and the edges are crispy.
• Nuts – you can toast cashews or hazelnuts and crush them. Sprinkle over soup.
• Toasted Pumpkin Seeds – you could even add a sprinkle of tamari sauce when toasting them.

There are so many options – have fun making this soup your own.