One-Pot Autumn Harvest Creamy Pumpkin Soup

 

Do you have leftover pumpkin purée from your bout with Pumpkin Fever?  Creamy Pumpkin Soup is easy to make and a deliciously seasonal soup on a cold fall day.  Even if you don’t have fresh pumpkin purée, you can use store-bought canned pumpkin, as long as you don’t use pumpkin pie filling.

I have enough pumpkin purée to last a year!   My bout with Pumpkin Fever really was a bad one this year; no doubt I was making up for the past five years while my Pumpkin Fever lay dormant.  I’ve cooked only about 3/4 of my pumpkins and I ended up with 22 cups of mashed pumpkin!  So far, I’ve made several things, some of them absolutely delicious (like Harvest Pumpkin Chili) and some absolute failures (like the pumpkin meatloaf I made last night that I won’t be posting!).  In any event, we are getting our fill of nutrient-rich pumpkins and believe it, or not, I’m not {yet} tired of pumpkin!

This recipe makes 9 cups or 6, 1 and 1/2 cup servings.  It didn’t last long in our house because my mother dropped by.  She loves creamed soups and gobbled this right up for lunch and then I sent her home with a couple of extra cups.  I did that because every time I make soup, Charlie says “oh, not soup!  I don’t like soup!”  But, he eats it anyway and 99 times out of 100 he says (as he’s eating his soup), “this is really good!”  Duh!  I don’t know what to do with him about his soup fixation!  Even after more than 25 years together, he still does this same routine over-and-over, even when I remind him (or is that ‘nag’ him) that he almost always likes my soups!

Go figure!

Anyway, here’s what you do:

 

 

1. Bake your pumpkins.  If you don’t know how, check out my post, Pumpkin Patch Pals Pumpkin Pie, for instructions.  After the pumpkins have cooled to the touch, slice them open, remove the stems and seeds and cut them in manageable quarters.
2. Then, take a spoon and scrape the pumpkin meat out of the pumpkin shell.  Or, you could use a knife and peel the pumpkin flesh from the pumpkin meat.  But, your pumpkin should be so soft from baking that spooning it out is really easy.
3. Remove as much of the pumpkin meat as you can without getting any of the skin.  As you can see, I came really close to getting too much pumpkin from the flesh!
4. Put the scooped pumpkin in a bowl and mash with a potato masher.

 

 

1. Add chicken stock to a large stockpot.
2. Measure out 4 cups of pumpkin purée.
3. Add pumpkin purée to the stockpot.
4. Add maple syrup to stockpot and stir to combine.  Turn heat on medium and heat soup.
5. Once hot, insert an immersion blender into the stockpot and blend until creamy.  If you don’t have an immersion blender, you can do this in a blender, in small batches, until soup is smooth and creamy.
6. Blended soup.
7. Measure out your fat-free half-and-half.
8. Add fat-free half-and-half and stir to combine.  Continue heating for a few minutes, stirring occasionally.
9. Add nutmeg and stir to combine.
10. Ready to serve.

 

 

 

I was trying to take a picture with the beautiful orange kalanchoe plant in the background and had limited success, so here’s a picture of this beautiful plant all by itself!

 

 

Here’s a close-up of the soup:

 

 

Then, I decided it needed extra half-and-half drizzled on it:

 

 

I was trying to draw a pumpkin; it did not go well…

 

 

So, I added more cream and then a dusting of nutmeg.  And, I accidentally jostled the bowl, leaving a ring of soup on the far side!

 

 

I think this is kinda like a cloud in the sky (see: The Cloud Chasers) – the longer you stare at it, the more apt you are to decide that it looks like something {grin}.  I think this looks like a crazy carved pumpkin, with his tongue hanging out, wearing a French beret that covers part of his right eye.  What do you think?

Then, again, I guess it’s just a mess and my wishful thinking…{grin}.

Here’s the recipe:

 

Print

 

Tootles,

 

Related Posts:

(other pumpkin recipes and posts)

• Blue Pumpkins
• Harvest Pumpkin Chili
• In Search of The Great Pumpkin
• Pumpkin Fever
• Pumpkin Patch Pals Pumpkin Pie
• Pumpkin Season
• Roasted Pumpkin Seeds with Sea Salt