Recipe: Roast pumpkin soup

Recipe - Roast pumpkin soup

Now that it is autumn, pumpkin and squashes are in abundance in the markets and shops. These wonderful veggies are versatile and bring both colour and nutrition to your plate. Here we give your our recipe for roast pumpkin soup. If pumpkin is not available, you can also use squash.

Pumpkins and squashes are both high in antioxidants, like carotenes and vitamin A. They are really low in calories (around 25 calories per 100 gram) and are packed full of flavour, particularly when roasted.

Recipe: Roast pumpkin soup

Our pumpkin soup is ideal for taking to work in a flask or an ideal autumnal lunchtime meal for all the family. This recipe serves 4 and the total calorie count is 439 (110 per person).

Ingredients

1 large onion, chopped
3 cloves of garlic, skinned and chopped
½ butternut squash (or ¼ large pumpkin), seeds and skin removed, chopped into bite size pieces
1 courgette, chopped
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp of oregano, basil or parsley
1 tbsp paprika (sweet)
Handful of freshly chopped parsley
1 tin of chopped tomatoes (or 3 tomatoes peeled and chopped)
2 litres of homemade vegetable stock or water
Juice half lemon
(optional 1 tbsp rice syrup or maple syrup for added sweetness)
To serve: 1 tbsp of oregano, basil or parsley, finely chopped

Method

  1. Roast the onion, garlic, squash and courgette in a large roasting tray in a medium oven until the squash is soft (30 minutes) – you can drizzle the olive oil over the top, along with the 1tbsp paprika and 1 tbsp herbs. To prevent sticking, add extra water to the roasting tray and shake a couple of times during cooking.
  2. Place the vegetable mixture into a large pan, then add the tomatoes, lemon juice and vegetable stock or water. Bring to the boil, then turn down the heat and leave to simmer gently for 20 minutes. Taste half way through, add the rice syrup for additional sweetness if needed.
  3. Remove from the heat and lightly blitz using a hand-blender; you can choose whether to blitz all to make a thick soup or leave all the pieces of vegetables intact (or somewhere in between).
  4. Serve, sprinkled with extra herbs

Tip:

Roast the vegetables the night before (if you have the oven on cooking) to make this a quick and easy soup.

This soup freezes well, so make a large batch one afternoon and freeze into portions (either single or family size). To defrost, remove from the freezer and place in a cool place so that it can defrost slowly.

About the author

Lisa
Lisa
Lisa is one of the founders of La Crisalida Retreats. She is an Epidemiologist, therapeutic hatha and yin yoga teacher and also teaches mindfulness meditation. Lisa has studied NLP and hypnosis, as well as nutrition (she designs the menus).