Crunchy Cook Recipe: Roast Pumpkin Soup

What’s inside the Roast Pumpkin Crunchy Cook bag?

This recipe was the first of our Crunchy Cook meal kit bags, prompted by the donation of loads of beautiful organic pumpkins grown at Tyninghame. We gave a number of bags away for free to support cooking skills, and they are also available to buy from the Crunchy Carrot.

You could use any variety of pumpkin or butternut squash for this soup. A Halloween pumpkin would work but it will taste way better with a squash grown for flavour. Jack o’lantern pumpkins are grown to be watery and easy to carve: they are edible and we encourage everyone to eat and not waste them if you can save the flesh, but they’re so different to firm, creamy squash that are grown for their delicious flavour.

Roasting the pumpkin gives a better flavour but isn’t absolutely necessary. If you prefer, you can just peel and cut the pumpkin into chunks and add it once the onion and garlic are cooked. Halloween pumpkins do really need to be roasted as they’re too watery, the soup won’t have any flavour without roasting it.

Peeling the pumpkin can be hard work so our suggestion is to simply slice it, roast it peel-and-all, then scoop the flesh out once softened. If you won’t be roasting the pumpkin you will need to peel it first with a vegetable peeler or knife.

Watch our video instructions for how to make this soup here: https://vimeo.com/475456557

We’ve made it as easy as possible for you to make this dish by packing the ingredients into a Crunchy Cook meal kit bag: we weigh everything out for you, include a recipe sheet and have filmed a step-by-step video showing you how to make it: How to Make Our Leek & Potato Soup Video. Crunchy Cook bags save you time, cost almost the same as buying the ingredients in-store (we add 50p for packaging and packing), and cut food waste because you buy exactly what you need.

Find out more about the bags, including how to order them, here.

Serves 4

Ingredients

Basic recipe, ingredients included in the bag:
1kg pumpkin / squash, unpeeled and cut into thick slices
1 onion, diced
300g floury potato (e.g. Maris Piper) cut into cubes
3 cloves of garlic, crushed
500ml vegetable stock, made up from a stock cube 

Not included in the bag:
2 tablespoons oil: olive or vegetable
Salt
Pepper

Possible additions
1 tablespoon garam masala or curry powder
1 finely chopped fresh chilli (be careful if combining this with spiced curry powder)
1 tablespoon grated fresh ginger, or a teaspoon of ground ginger

Method

1.      Preheat the oven to 200C / 180C fan / gas mark 4. Toss the pumpkin slices in a tablespoon of oil and arrange on a baking tray. Roast in the oven for 20 minutes until soft and lightly browned. Put to one side to cool slightly.

2.      While it’s roasting, heat a tablespoon of oil in a lidded pan over a medium heat. Add the diced onion, put the lid on and gently sweat until soft.

3.      Add the crushed garlic to the softened onion and cook for two more minutes, along with any chilli, ginger or curry powder you might be using.

4.      Add the cubed potato, the stock and some black pepper. (Go easy on adding salt as the stock is salty.) Bring to the boil, reduce to a simmer for about 8 minutes until the potato is almost soft. While it’s simmering scoop the pumpkin flesh from the skin.

5.      Put the pumpkin flesh in the soup pan and simmer for 5 - 10 minutes. If you didn’t roast the pumpkin, simmer for a little longer until it is soft.  

6.      Remove from the heat and either whizz it smooth with a food processor / hand blender, mash with a potato masher or eat as-is.