A new stick blender and a change in the season was the perfect opportunity to make this hearty and filling soup. Except, some things didn’t go as planned …

Time: 4/5
Takes time to roast pumpkins, time to blend them, time to simmer …

Effort: 5/5
Stick to two portions and save your sanity.

Some like it thiccc

The weather is definitely warmer than I remember as a kid. Autumn by calendar time came and passed without the weather ever feeling like autumn – in fact, October was still uncomfortably hot despite tank tops and flip flops. It’s hard to deny climate change when it’s part of my lived experience.

Even so, cultural influences die hard, and all the American Thanksgiving-related media had me wondering if pumpkin soup would be meal prep friendly. I’ve been looking for an excuse to get a stick blender for some time, and we recently bought some seafood stock at a steep discount from a grocery store’s closing deal.

I reckoned it wouldn’t be too hard to roast a whole lot of pumpkins, blend them up right in the stainless steel pan, poach some seafood in it and serve it with the sourdough left from the avocado toast recipe to make it a high protein, calorie conscious meal. It might be even better with a drizzle of the Portuguese olive oil our friend got us.

I was so wrong. I seriously think that making this recipe cost me a couple of gray hairs. It took a lot more oven space than I thought to roast the pumpkins, and it was difficult to properly stick-blend in the wide pan. And after going through the struggle of blending in batches, I (re)discovered how much a thick liquid likes to splatter when being simmered.

That’s not to say this recipe wasn’t good. On the contrary, the soup was delicious, and it continued to bring us joy all week as we enjoyed it over the course of several lunches. I only sound like a killjoy because this recipe didn’t match the misplaced expectations I had for it when I came up with it in my head.

I’m committed to showing my mistakes, just as much as I want to show how my meal prep ideas get developed. Hopefully with time, I (and you along with me) will figure out what works well, and why.

In the meantime, do as I say and not as I do. Stick to reasonable portion sizes, save your hairs from graying, and enjoy this pretty good pumpkin soup. (PS: the stick blender served with distinction the following week making a tomato soup to go with grilled cheese.)

Posts since the last recipe that was actually served with rice: 6

Dramatis Personae

Served 5.

3lb pumpkins 

This is where the majority of my pain was felt. I severely underestimated how much volume pumpkins take up! There simply was not enough space in my oven to roast so much pumpkin at once. This might be because of their spherical shape, but I doubt the results would change much if I used the longer butternut squash instead.

Perhaps some of the pain could be alleviated by blending the soup with the stick blender in the stock pot instead. But the stock pot can’t fit in the dishwasher, and washing a big pot by hand is another level of pain entirely.

I should stop myself before I vent anymore. The moral of the story is to make sure your kitchen equipment is suitable for the recipes and quantities of food you attempt to make. It’s still very good soup, I just shouldn’t have tried to make 5 portions when I could only realistically manage 2.

Pumpkin seeds

To be roasted and used as a garnish, once removed from the pumpkins and cleaned. I thought it would be nice for some crunch and texture, plus it echoes the theme of the soup.

It sounded good on paper, but let me tell you it’s not worth the trouble. It takes ages removing the seeds from the stringy sticky insides of the pumpkin guts, and a pumpkin has way more seeds than you need to garnish the soup it yields.

Make the bread, buy the butter. Get your pumpkin seeds from the store.

One onion

Or one and a half, because my onions have been sitting around so long that half of one of them went bad. Which is fine, because soups and stews are a great way to salvage vegetables that are past their prime – it’s all getting blended up later. Just make sure to leave a large margin when amputating the bad bits, because mold can extend further into food than you can see.

500ml Stock

Roughly half a litre, with a bit of water to loosen up the consistency. I would have used more, but the limiting factor here is the sodium content. Applications like these are perfect for home-made stocks, because you can add as much flavour as you like without needing to worry about the salt.

900g cod

The protein is the difference between this soup being a meal, rather than an appetiser. Cod is a super lean fish, which gives me space to fill this meal out with the olive oil and the bread. I was budgeting my calories when I made this soup, but you could use whatever protein you like.

5 slices of sourdough 

Soup is yet another excuse to eat good olive oil on good bread, and I have plenty of bread from the recipes earlier that week. Make sure it’s nice and crusty, so it can stand up to being dipped in soup.

Others

Salt and pepper to taste, plus a drizzle of good olive oil and a sprinkle of whatever herbs you have for garnish. In between the stock and the roasted pumpkin, there should be plenty of flavour to go around.

Executive summary

1. Preheat the oven. Halve the pumpkins, and scoop out the seeds.
2. Roast pumpkin at 180C/350F for an hour. While pumpkin roasts, clean the fibres off of the seeds, then dice and sweat the onions.
3. Reserve the pumpkin once it is tender. Lower the temperature and roast the pumpkin seeds at 160C/320F for 30 minutes, or until lightly brown.
4. In the meantime, blend the onions and pumpkin in batches with some of the stock.
5. Add stock and water to the purée, and bring to a simmer. Adjust seasoning to taste.
6. Cube up the cod and simmer in the soup for a few minutes, or until it flakes.
7. Serve with a drizzle of olive oil, a scattering of pumpkin seeds, a sprinkle of herbs, and a piece of bread.

Play by Play

Last things first. As the oven preheated, I halved and deseeded the pumpkin. A good cleaver is indispensable.

That’s way more pumpkin than I expected! The pumpkin with good contact to the sheet pan should get nice and roasty.

On to the surprisingly long and arduous task of cleaning up the pumpkin seeds …

The pumpkin takes ages to roast, which leaves us plenty of time to dice and sweat the onions.

Once the pumpkins are tender, remove and allow to cool.

And since the oven is now free, I can turn the heat down and start roasting the seeds. Stir them every once in a while, until lightly browned. If you want, you can stick the bread in the cooling oven to toast it a bit in the residual heat.

In the meantime, I was scooping out the pumpkin flesh and blending them in batches with the onions, and a bit of stock.

That’s a lot of purée! It’s enough food for 5 meals, so I guess we’re par on course. Add stock and/or water and bring to a simmer, adjusting for seasoning.

The soup takes a while to simmer, so I took advantage of the downtime to cube up the cod. It only takes a few minutes to poach the fish.

Pepper to taste, and we’re done. Time to plate up!

A bit of herb, a scatter of pumpkin seeds, a swirl of olive oil, and a piece of toast.

Mmmmh.

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