Homemade Pumpkin Soup

This pumpkin soup recipe is very easy but amazingly delicious. I normally serve it with bread or toast. If you are a vegetarian, you can replace the bacon with croutons and use vegetable broth instead of chicken broth.

中文食譜按這裏

Serves : 3 to 4 servings

Preparation time : 10 minutes

Cooking time : 20 minutes

Ingredients

• 900g pumpkin
• 1 medium white onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 3 strips of bacon or a handful of croutons
• 1.5 cup of organic chicken broth or vegetable broth
• 1 cup of water
• 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and 25g of unsalted butter
• 1/3 tsp of sea salt
• 1/4 tsp of ground black pepper
• 1 tbsp of extra virgin olive oil or rice barn oil for frying the bacon

Instructions

First of all, wash the pumpkin and use a metal spoon to scoop out the seeds and fibrous strands.

Cut the pumpkin into 4 to 5 cm wide thick slices and peel the skin off with a knife. Then, cut the pumpkin into big chunks and set aside.

Peel the white onion and cut it into big chunks too.

Crush and chop two cloves of garlic.

Chop the stems of the parsley and put them with the chopped garlic and set aside.

Then chop the parsley leaves.

Heat up a pan and add one table spoon of olive oil or rice bran oil, then put the streaky bacon inside. Use low heat to fry the bacon until they are nice and brown. Leave the bacon to cool down, so they would become crispy. Break them into small pieces and set aside.

Heat up a pot and add one tbsp of extra virgin olive oil and 25g of unsalted butter. You can replace the unsalted butter with 2 more tbsp of extra virgin olive too. Add crushed garlic and parsley stem when the oil is bubbling.

Add the chopped onion and stir fry with medium low heat until soft.

Put the chopped pumpkin in and stir. Add some sea salt and ground black pepper and keep stirring for about 3 minutes.

Pour 1.5 cup of organic chicken broth and 1 cup of water inside the pot and stir.

Then put the lid on and cook for about 10 minutes until the pumpkin chunks are soft.

Check the pumpkin with a spatula. Should be able to break it easily.

Turn off the heat and blend the pumpkin with a blender until it turns into a thick and smooth pumpkin soup. You can taste your soup and see if it needs more seasoning.

Serve the soup with a few drops of extra virgin olive oil, chopped parsley and crispy bacon.

We normally enjoy this pumpkin soup with a nice piece of bread or toast. It is a easy and delicious lunch idea for our family.

Cooking Tips:

• Some people like to add cream in pumpkin soup, so it is creamy and rich. But I don’t really like it because you can’t really taste the pumpkin and its too heavy.
• You can use butternut squash too, but you may need to add 1 tsp of raw sugar because butternut squash is not as sweet.
• The organic chicken broth that I used is quite rich, so I diluted it with 1 cup of water. Taste your broth before using it. You don’t want the broth over-power the pumpkin.
• Vegetarian friends can use vegetable broth and croutons to replace chicken broth and bacon.