Butternut Pumpkin Soup with Sour Cream and Roasted Seeds

The Butternut is back, bitches! Sorry, just enthusiastic. This time in the form of a comforting soup. It was a bit of an experiment since I read somewhere that for a lot of pumpkin kinds you can leave the skin on as long as you make sure it's soft enough by cooking/roasting/...! This seemed like a game changer, since removing the peel of a pumpkin is just so much work, especially if you don't have a decent big knife like I do at Uni... :( Plus it would means wasting less, so I'm all for it. I'm also roasting the seeds to add to my soup as a crunch at the end, so I literally used the whole pumpkin! I wanted to make it more an oriental tasting soup, but didn't have any ginger and I'm already adding coconut milk to my dinner. But I'm thinking an excellent version of this soup would be with ginger, maybe some lemon grass, definitely a bunch of coriander and coconut milk. I did end up adding a bit of (light) sour cream to cut through that comforting, slightly sweet pumpkin flavour. Since I wanted some more colour and thought it would go well I added some (frozen) parsley and of course my toasted pumpkin seeds.

I decided to back to the two tier recipe format. I thought it unnecessary with 'easy' recipes, but honestly I like having the room to give you all the tips & tricks that I can which makes the recipe a little chaotic so it really does seem handy to have a shorthand version of it. Plus I have no doubt that most have little interest in my ramblings and are just looking for some recipe inspiration. If anyone has suggestions on how to make the recipes more readable/useable, be sure to let me know. Do you prefer them with photos at various steps? Plus I made a nice picture for you guys this time even! So I might do a little plating section again. Consider this my wintry valentine soup. Look at me, being all topical. This is another recipe of my own design so I might update this if/when I perfect/improve this.

Soup - 6 or more servings -  120cal/serving (800cal/whole pot) - 30min + 40min cooking

 (4.7g fat, 1.2g saturated; 19.3g carbs and 3.2g protein)

Ingredients

- Butternut pumpkin
- Carrots
- Onions
- Garlic
- Chicken/Vegetable stock
- Sour Cream
- Curry
- Salt & Pepper
- Parsley or Chives
- Olive oil

Short instructions

 - Preheat oven to 190°C / 375°F.

- Roast pumpkin (cut into wedges, unpeeled) in oven for 30min with roughly cut up carrots, onions and garlic. Sprinkle with curry powder, sea salt and olive oil.

- When pumpkin and peel are soft, transfer to big pot and add stock. Let boil until extremely soft.

- Blend until smooth.

- Roast pumpkin seeds in pan with lid.

- Serve with cream cheese, roasted seeds and some cut up parsley or chives. Enjoy the wintry comfort!

Extended Recipe

Ingredients

- Butternut Pumpkin/Squash (1.5kg / 50oz): A sweet bottle shaped variety of pumpkin. Any sweet tasting pumpkin will do though!
- Carrots: I used two big ones, all I had left.
- Onions: 2 normal or 3-4 big shallots
- Garlic: 4 big cloves
- Chicken/Vegetable stock: I used a cube of both. I know I should use fresh, but until I have the resources (space and enough pots in kitchen) and budget I'll make do with cubes.
- Sour Cream: I used light, two teaspoons in every bowl. (Light) Yoghurt would work well here as well, or even some cottage cheese, just use whatever you have. ;)
- Curry: Your favourite mixture, perhaps a bit extra cumin.
- Salt&Pepper
- Parsley/Chives: I used a bit of frozen parsley, for taste and colour.
- Olive oil: As always, don't use too liberally (ca. 1tbsp)

Detailed instructions

 - Preheat oven to 190°C / 375°F.
- Cut your butternut into two length and side wise. Remove seeds, but don't throw out, we'll roast them as garnish later. Cut pumpkin into wedges, don't remove peel.

- Peel and roughly chop up your carrots, onions and garlic.

-  Put all your cut up veggies on an oven plate. I used my oven plate and a separate small oven casserole, since our oven is TINY. Especially the pumpkin in the casserole took longer to get soft, since it was less spread out.

- Sprinkle with 1 tbsp of curry, 0.5 tbsp of sea salt and 1 tbsp of olive oil.

- Roast pumpkin for about 30minutes until soft. They soften even further (the skin too!) in the pot.

- Transfer to big soup pot and add about halfway with your stock. You can always add more stock if it's too thick, but if it's too watery you have to boil all that fluid out, which takes a while.

- Blend well, I use an immersion mixer, but blender is fine too. Take of of fire for this. As you blend on a high fire, the hot thick pumpkin boils and splashes up and burns you like a ***. I've made this mistake with sooo many soups. Safe to say I'm secretly an idiot who never learns.

- Roast your pumpkin seeds in a pan on a high fire. Season with a bit of salt if you want. Put a lid on it, because pumpkin seeds apparently pop like corn. :o Shake it frequently to prevent burning. Make sure they're nice and toasty though and let them pop a bit longer with lid after you take them of of the fire. Mine could've used a bit longer, some of them were a bit chewy (presumably hadn't 'popped' yet). You can also roast them in the oven.

- Season your soup with extra salt and pepper to taste. Add a little cayenne if you like a bit of spice.

- I had to add some extra water, but not a lot. I love a really thick soup though, especially in winter and since it served as my lunch, but make it as thin or thick as your prefer. You are the despot of your soup pot!

- Serve with sour cream/yoghurt (two tsp per bowl), your toasted seeds and sprinkle with your parsley or chives (more than you see in the picture, but didn't want to hide my sour cream heart :D). Mix all those goodies and enjoy your thick, comforting, healthy(!) winter soup.

Aww, ruined the heart :P