Recipe: Pumpkin Soup

It's October! Which means one thing in my book: pumpkin flavoured everything. 

Personally, I love all things pumpkin. Pumpkin is one of my favourite vegetables and whether it's sweet or savoury, if it's got pumpkin in it - I'll eat it!

This time of year there are pumpkins everywhere which means cooking with them is easy (it's cutting them that's the hard part!). But if you like the look of this recipe and want to make it all year round, butternut squash works perfectly too.

This is another one of my "not really a recipe" recipes and I'll apologise now for that. The reason behind the lack of measurements is because this soup is all about how you want to make it and how you like it. Because it's the kind of recipe you can't really mess up, you can adapt it to how you like it. (Disclaimer: winter is upon us which means awful lighting for blog photos)

I love making soups because of how easy they are plus they're a good way of getting vegetables in. I personally think that if you're making a vegetable soup, roasting the vegetables is the best way to get the maximum flavour for everything. 

As I've mentioned previously, I've not been well at all recently and I haven't really improved since I last posted. I set myself a goal of making soup this weekend so I didn't mind using a little extra effort to roast the vegetables rather than make it a one pot dish. 

If you have trouble getting your family/other halves/friends etc. to eat vegetables then this soup is a good way of sneaking them in. I literally went round the supermarket and just picked up what I thought would be good but like I said, adapt it to your liking and add your favourite vegetables. The soup world is your oyster!

More than likely, you'll have a lot of pumpkin left over. I peeled and chopped mine and froze it raw so I can use it at a later date. Pumpkins are a hassle and a half to cut but I'd recommend going for a rather large one because there's so much you can do with it once it's frozen. 

The vegetables I went for are:

• Half a medium/large pumpkin
• 2 carrots
• Half a large sweet potato
• 1 large red onion
• 1 beef tomato (deseeded)
• 1 red pepper
• 1 head of garlic
• 2 red chilli's (deseeded)
• sage
• rosemary

Once you've peeled and chopped your pumpkin into rough pieces (seriously, don't worry about the chopping as it's all being blended later), chop the rest of your vegetables. Making sure to keep the onion in large quarters as this will cook quicker than the rest of the vegetables and no one wants burnt onion in their soup.

Season your vegetables with salt and pepper once they're in roasting trays and cover with a glug of oil. I used rapeseed but olive oil or even vegetable oil would be fine. Put the garlic (no need to peel) around the veg and scatter over the herbs. I used my hands at this stage to mix everything together.

As you can see, I used multiple roasting trays for this because of the amount of soup I was making.

Put into a 200° oven and roast for an hour or more, until your vegetables are soft and can be squashed easily with a fork. Meanwhile, heat chicken or vegetable stock in a saucepan. I used homemade and some added water but a stock cube would work perfectly too. 

At this point, you can either put the vegetables in a blender or into a casserole dish and use an immersion blender. Take the garlic out of the pan before blending and smoosh (that's a technical term) it out of its skin. 

If using an immersion blender, blend the vegetables into a puree and add a ladle of stock at a time until the soup is the consistency you desire. I haven't given a measurement for the stock as it really depends how thick you like it. I'd recommend making up 500ml at first and then go from there. 

Taste the soup and season if needed. 

And there you go! Roast pumpkin soup!

There are so many possible adaptions to this recipe that it probably would require a separate post. You can make it vegan by using vegetable stock, you can add any vegetables you like and you can even use less stock and make it into a pasta sauce instead! 

Making stock in huge batches means that you can freeze multiple portions and you will always have something for dinner handy. It can be heated from frozen so you're never a minute away from the most comforting, autumnal bowl of deliciousness.

Now, in the spirit of not wasting anything - I'm going to give you two recipes in one!

Pumpkin spiced pumpkin seeds.

These are heavenly and a good way to use up the seeds. Don't throw them away! 

Rinse them to remove the pumpkin and dry in a tea towel. 

In a bowl, put the pumpkin seeds and add the following ingredients. And guess what... No measurements again. I really need to start writing stuff down.

• Brown sugar (no more than 3 tsp)
• Maple Syrup (around 2 tsp)
• Salt
• Cinnamon
• Ginger
• Nutmeg
• Mixed Spice (the smallest amount)

Add a teaspoon of oil, mix the seeds in their delicious coating and put into a 180° oven for 10-15 minutes. Keep an eye on them as they can burn easily. I forgot to take an after photo as I was too busy eating them.

I will warn you though, these are seriously addictive. I made them yesterday and they're already gone. They're sticky, sweet, salty and so moreish.