Guaranteed! 5 tips how to make sure that you will be enjoying a delicious pumpkin soup in 30 minutes from now. Click here to be sure your will enjoy a tasty bowl of freshly made soup.
This recipe works also perfectly for people using a soup maker. However read our tips to make sure anybody with a cooking pot can make soup in 30 minutes or less.
Easy pumpkin soup recipe without cream
If you would read one of my Belgian blogs, you would know that I write a lot about pumpkins?
Why? What’s the big deal? Why am I obsessed with pumpkins? Low carb? Paleo Diet? Glutenfree? …
On a personal side, I write about pumpkins because, well, I really enjoy the ability to turn it fast into any meal – sweet or savory – for breakfast, lunch, snack or dinner.
There’s another reason. When it comes to wondering what to do with pumpkins, I’m right there with you!
I used to not bother about pumpkins. I ate some pretty bland pumpkin soups before and my mom just hates pumpkins. Why? Because during the second world war, her parents made bland pumpkin jam in stead of sweet fruit marmelades. Worse still: the Dutch started eating tulips…
However: you don’t hear anybody eating tulip bulbs these days, do you? Same should go for those humongous pumpkins… Those are actually for scaring the creeps out of your neighbors at Halloween. But when it comes to pumpkins: size does matter. And in this case: the smaller, the better!
Having said so: if you do add lotsa spices and some sugar, you could make this delicious sweet and spicy pumpkin soup from carved pumpkin…
Do you suck at making pumpkin soup?
Most likely you don’t but your pumpkin does 🙂
First things first: buy yourself a small,tasty pumpkin like a butternut squash or a sweet buttercup squash.
Or when you love smoothies like me: choose the even more sweet Japanese kabocha.
And when you hate cutting pumpkins or you just love not to loose your fingers: the small Japanse Hokkaido doesn’t need cutting. Nor does the butternut by the way, which add a nutty taste to your meals!
Can you really make soup from that hard pumpkin in 30 minutes?
Oh yes you can! Faster even!
Why?
Because as hard as they may seem, pumpkins cook faster than potatoes. 10 minutes and you can mash them up like… apple sauce.
And talking about apples: just add them to your pumpkin, boil together and mash together… And you have the basic ingredient of most of my pumpkin smoothies… But let’s stick to soup I hear you say! Ok, just wanted to tell you how versatile… ok; soup it will be!
How to make easy pumpkin soup in 30 minutes or less
You don’t know me and you still feel skeptical now… don’t you?
If you have answered yes, 5 suggestions to speed things up… guaranteed!
- Start with buying a butternut or Hokkaido pumpkin, so you won’t waste any time cutting. And you are guaranteed to come back for more recipes, since you will still have all your fingers 🙂
- Don’t make a fancy “mise en place” as if you where a 3 star Michelin chef. They will tell their sous-chef to do the cutting anyway! When making a fast soup, rule of thumb is that:
- cut an onion and saute. Meanwhile cut more ingredients and add to the onions. As such your onions will already be softened or beter still browned. Browned is a fancy word for “much more taste in your soup”! Then you can add your cut pumpkin or just keep on cutting and adding as you go.
- Boil yourself hot water of stock whilst you are cooking the pumpkin.
- Have a immersion blender ready: so you can mix your soup without wasting precious time waiting for your soup to cool down before mixing in a conventional blender. I agree with you: a normal blender will make a smoother soup. But to guarantee you will be enjoying your pumpkin soup in less than 30 minutes from when you started reading all the above: use an immersion blender.
How do you make a fast and easy pumpkin soup that your whole family loves? (In case you were wondering why there is a comment box below…)
- 1 small onion or 2 shallots
- 1 long red chili pepper
- 30 grams (1 oz) of fresh ginger root (a piece as long as your thumb)
- 5 garlic cloves: marrow removed
- 2 limes (keep the zest and the juice separate)
- ½ bunch of fresh coriander (keep leaves separate from roots and stems)
- 1 to 2 tablespoons oil
- 1 to 2 stalks of lemongrass
- 3 carrots
- 1 pumpkin of one and a half kilogram (about 3 pound)
- 1000 to 1250 ml of water or chicken broth (about 4 to 5 cups)
- 3 medium-sized carrots, peeled, cut
- if you really want a creamy feel: (200 ml - 7 oz)): coconut milk or nut milk (just blend about 20 grams/ 1 oz of cashew nuts with 200ml/7oz of water till milky, which in my Magic Bullet Blender takes 1 minute)
- rock salt
- black pepper
- In a small blender: mix in the shallot, chili, ginger, garlic, lime zest, carrots and coriander-stalks to a paste. Better would be to use a pestle, but we just want to go fast. Add a little oil if necessary, to make sure your blender mixes everything well.
- Pour some oil in a large soup pot with a thick bottom, crush the lemongrass stalk(s) and add. Add the spice paste and cook for a few minutes until the aromas are released.
- In the meantime, you can cut and add the carrots.
- Meanwhile you peel the pumpkin (unless you use butternut of Hokkaido), remove the seeds and cut the flesh into pieces. Add to the pot, pour over 1 liter (4 cups) of water or chicken broth, bring to the boil and simmer for at least 15 minutes.
- In the meantime, you make fresh nut milk in a blender, unless you have coconut milk on standby. We prefer cashew milk anytime, unless we are making a spicy soup (spicy like in this Tom Yum soup recipe), then we would prefer freshly made coconut milk.
- When the pumpkin and carrots are cooked, remove the lemongrass stalk(s) and puree the soup with a immersion blender. Add nut milk, rock salt, black pepper and lime juice to taste, puree again and your pumpkin soup is ready for serving. Enjoy!
- Please leave a comment!
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