Cream of Pumpkin Soup recipe
Comments(41)
This pumpkin has been languishing on the windowsill for the last week. Not waiting to be changed into a coach for one of our min pins but to be transformed into a vicious head to ward off the Halloween daemons. Halloween has become a vast industry in Britain. Party and toy shops bulge with decorations and the means to disguise the most innocent looking toddler into a vampire, witch or the sort of half eaten zombie that would not be welcome at your average convention of ghouls.
The children in the house where I’m working have already bought the basics for October 31st. Occasionally one creeps up behind me as I work and tickles my neck with a plastic scythe, the skull mask that looms behind it is truly disturbing. Danny and I add to this multi million pound industry when we remember that it’s Halloween and rush down to the village shop to stock up on sweets for trick or treat. Danny spends the evening praying that no child will visit and he can eat the sweets.
The best thing about Halloween for us is pumpkin soup. My friend Clare gave me this recipe that she adapted from an old vegetarian cook book Entertaining with Cranks. This is the best pumpkin soup I have ever tasted, so it appeals to vegetarians and hardened carnivores alike. We use the soft parts that have been scooped out from the pumpkin head.
Recipe for Cream of Pumpkin Soup (serves 4-6)
Ingredients:
- 2 lbs/900g of pumpkin (peeled, seeds removed and chopped)
- I large onion (roughly chopped)
- 1 large potato (peeled and chopped)
- 1 large carrot (peeled and chopped)
- 1 stick of celery (chopped and thick strings discarded)
- 1.5 pts/700 ml of vegetable stock or add two tsp of marigold powder to the same amount of water.
- 1 vegetable stock cube
- 1oz/25g of butter
- half pt of cream
- 2 tbl spoons of chopped chives to garnish
- Salt and pepper to taste
Preparation time 25 mins
Cooking time approx. 30 mins
Method:
- Melt the butter in a large heavy bottomed saucepan and add all the vegetables.
- Cook gently for 5 mins, stirring occasionally. Don’t allow the vegetables to brown.
- Pour in the stock and add the stock cube and stir.
- Simmer gently until the vegetables are just cooked (about 20 minutes) and then purée with an electric blender.
- Return the puréed vegetables to the saucepan and season to taste. Add another 1/2 tsp of Marigold if it needs lifting.
- Add the cream and re heat very gently and thin with more stock if necessary.
- Sprinkle with the chopped chives and serve.
Tricks and tips:
- If you plan to freeze this soup do not add the cream until you defrost and serve the soup
- The soup can also be made with butternut squash instead of pumpkin
Update October 2009: We have a brand new pumpkin soup recipe here.
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i’ve made a lovely marmalade this year with a summer squash and a few oranges and lemons. the grated squash absorbs the sugar really well so, even if it doesn’t set too well, it has a good ‘firm’ texture. the pumpkin gives it a beautiful golden orange colour. the recipe is in Oded Shwartze’s preserves book. (his recipes ALWAYS work for me)
Ref pumpkin recipe, where can I get Marigold powder?
Hi Carter,
Marigold powder is a brand of vegetable stock powder. I am sorry if the recipe was misleading. This stock powder is really useful and I use it all the time. It is in a tub and I have seen it in Waitrose/Tesco/Sainsbury’s.
A teaspoon in a mug topped up with boiling water makes a great winter drink too.
Am going to try your recipe. Is it single or double cream?
Hi Helen
Cream is single. Hope that it turns out well for you.
your soup turned out wonderful. my friends who were here last night for hallowe’en qave it a big thumbs up. my son was the biggest fan and he used to hate veggies when he was young.helen.
Hi Helen,
This is a good recipe for pumpkin soup. Thanks so much for the feedback.
Used this recipe for my first ever try at pumpkin soup, and it was wonderful – the whole family loved it. Very easy to make too!
Hi Fran,
Thanks so much for the feedback – much appreciated!
hi,,
tried the pumpkin soup wow!! My family hates pumpkin ..when i made the soup and gave it they licked it till the last in the wok.. we all loved it… it was the best recipe soup i ever done…thanks for a great recipe.
Hello Anand
Thanks so much for dropping by and leaving this comment.
I love the soup too. Like your family I am not wild about pumpkin! But this soup is delicious.
Hi,
I know this sounds really silly but when the vegetables have been cooked in the stock (point 4) should I drain off the stock before blending in the blender?
Sorry if this sounds really silly – I have never followed a receipe for soup before!
Hi Debbie
Keep the stock and blend with the vegetables! It’s part of the soup.
Hi
Im about to make Pumpkin soup for the 1st time, im looking at your recipe but am a little confused about them amount of cream and veg stock to put in, they both have ? before them rather than a number, can you help please?
Hi Lucy
Sorry there was a glitch here. I’ve updated the post!
I’ve logged in to this date through the recents comments and it was very timely. I’ve just bought a huge pumpkin with the idea of making soup but have no recipe. I boiled some pigs trotters (yuk)& added some roasted pumpkin, garlic & onion and put it to one side as I ran out of time. I’ll tweak it today and hope I can make something palatable but with over 1/2 pumpkin left I’ll try this recipe next. Yum. btw Marigold veg stock sprinkled over pumpkin with olive oil & pepper & roasted transforms the pumpkin into a delicious veg.
Hi great to read all the reviews. There is nothing worse than trying out a new recipe and not liking it. I have every confidence that we will enjou this pumpkin soup.
Thanks and happy halloween
Made the soup, fantastic, even my partner agreed and he wouldn’t be a fan of soup’s. Really easy to make, and have shared the recipe with others.
Thanks ever so much.
If you have other interesting recipes, dont hesitate to forward them on
This is a great recipe and i am adding very similar to this over on my site. The main difference is that my version is vegetarian. So i sub the butter and cream.
i personaly loved it!
rock on to who ever wrote it
i’m adicted to it and all my friends love it
i’m 12 and i think it was beautiful next time ur in the supermarket buy the ingreadiants and make it
i made it all by myself
I have just bought a pumpkin and I am going to make the soup this weekend.
With regards to storage if I make the soup and then eat some straight away and then freeze the rest – how much cream should be used per portion? How many portions does this soup make? If I just refrigerate the soup after making how long will it keep for? Help
Lovely soup! I made this from pumpkin we hollowed out at work for a competition, and it went down a storm securing us second place for our recycling ;o)
I stumbled upon your soup recipe and realised that the first roasted belly pork was one of yours too – you’re now firmly in my ‘favourites’ list!
Hi KarenO
Can’t wait to try your pumpkin roasted with a sprinkle of marigold! Thanks.
Hello Tanya
I do hope that this worked out for you.
HI Sorcha
I love this soup too and have found hat even soup haters enjoy it too
Hi Charlie
Thanks for this link. I’d love a veggie version.
Hello Jessie
Thanks for dropping by. I wish that I’d started to cook at your age.
Hi Lisa
You need to measure the finished soup and then work out the proportion of cream to each pot. Don’t ad the cream to the ones that you are going to freeze! The soup keeps well for 2-3 days in a fridge.
Hi Sam
Great news. You should have won first prize! Thanks so much for leaving a comment.
Thank you so much for this easy and simple recipie , the soup was amazing . I thank you again .
Jimmy/ Zunera
Middlesex
Has anyone got the recipe for pumpkin soup where you cut off the top, scoop out the seeds and add milk,cream,cheese etc, then bake in oven …
There is more to it than that but what I can’t remember -please help
Can you leave out the butter & cream?
Hello Jimmy and Zunera
Glad that you enjoyed the recipe!
Hi Lorna
I’ve haerd about this recipe but can’t remember where I saw it.
Hi Dot
I think that you could leavr out the butter and cream it just wouldn’t taste so rich.
For Lorna
Cut off top of pumpkin and scoop out seed and stringy bits
fill with equal quantities of sweetcorn and small cubes of gruyere cheese
then pour in double cream to fill
add grated nutmeg salt and pepper
put on top cover with foil and bake until the pumpkin is soft.
scoop out contents and mix up a bit and serve with crusty bread
I do individual sized pumpkins and we eat it straight out of the shells
[...] soup recipe, which uses coconut milk and coriander, or combine with other root veg to make a hearty cream of pumpkin soup. If you’re dieting, a low fat option is pumpkin soup with zesty orange and [...]
“Halloween has become a vast industry in England”
– but not in the rest of Britain? Sorry – I didn’t realise that I’d stumbled on a recipe that only pertained to one of the countries of the UK.
Hello Huw
Ooops
Hi there,
I have 35 pumpkins that I am working on for a huge party we are having!!
We are carving about 6/8 a night until Sat.
What I would like to know is how can I store the flesh between now and Sat? I want to make your soup recipe for the party, but as I am scooping out the flesh on a daily basis, I don’t know what would be the best way to keep it fresh!??
Please I hope you can help, I am in a right dilemma
I really would be grateful for any advice, I have never made Pumpkin soup before! let alone this much!!
Cheers Sharon x
Hi Ron
Wow 35 pumpkins
I’ve been trying to work out what’s best for you to do. The only conclusion I’ve come to is to cook and freeze the pumkin flesh until later in the week when the flesh can be stored in a container in the fridge. That would also take a lot of the sweat out of making the soup all in one go as the fleash is quite hard to chop.
If you save the seeds – wash and dry in a warm oven they make great snacks for the party (lightly salted) and could also be sprinkled on the soup.
I’m with Fiona on this- cook,puree,freeze as you go until you get close to the day when fridging would do.
If you are carving the rest of the pumpkins for lanterns you will need to keep them cool too as they will probably get mould after about four days- so keep an eye on them and scrape off mouldy bits daily so they stay good for Saturday.
Thank you Fiona & Kate for your advice.
I think that is a good idea to cook smaller batches daily and then make the final pot on Saturday. I am getting more and more excited about this soup than anything else!! To be honest I don’t like pumpkin at all but after reading all these comments I am hoping to be pleasantly surprised. I am definitely going to do the Nut thing.. Thanks Katie, I have put each finished pumpkin under the Verandha to keep cool but protected, I am sure that will be ok?? Well thanks again, I must go now as I still have 24 pumpkins left to do!! wish me luck! ( Saving the best to last, the only one I managed to grow!!)
ps. I will let you all know how Saturday turns out, what everyone thinks of my soup!!?
Ahhh can’t wait xxx
Hi
I have just started to carve a pumpkin with my son, we took the lid off and scooped out all of the inside, which appears to just be stringy pumpkin and seeds, can I use the stringy flesh? will it blens into a silky smooth soup?
I imagined it would be like a squash which I could cut into chunks. Thanks for the recipe and your time.
Hi Audrey
If it’s one of those big supersize ones it’s grown for carving rather than taste. Our small supermarket ones had seeds (which can be roasted for snacks) some stringy bits that I did cook and quite a bit of flesh. Our’s turned out fine. But if you look Suky’s comment on http://www.cottagesmallholder.com/pamela%e2%80%99s-perfect-pumpkin-soup-recipe-5368 you will see that it might taste awful.
Thank you for this recipe – prepared this morning,and eaten this afternoon – delicious
Made this today and it was great. I don’t make much soup but it was delicious and easy.
any thanks
Made this on halloween just the way you described and it went down a storm with the family.. thanks
Hi Damian
Thanks for dropping by. I love pumpkin soup!
Hello Hilary
I love having soup in the fridge and make quite a lot during the winter. In fact I’ve got a pumpkin sitting on the kitchen table waiting to be transformed into soup.
Hi Julie
Great that everyone enjoyed it. Thanks for leaving a comment.