Pumpkin Soup

This is easy if you’re using canned pumpkin and not that much harder if you’re using those little pie pumpkins. I’m giving it to you now because the thyme is going wild in my garden, but it’s a seasonal favorite in the delagar household in October, when those little sugar pumpkins start showing up in the stores.

If you want to use fresh pumpkins, which is fun, buy 3 or 4 sugar pumpkins.  (You want to end up with about 2 cups of mashed pumpkin.) 

Cut them in half, clean out the seeds, and roast face-down on a baking sheet covered with aluminum foil or parchment paper at 400 degrees for about 30 minutes. Let them cool, and then scrape out the pulp and mash up.

Or you can just use canned pumpkin, which honestly is just as good these days.

Ingredients:

• Some kind of fat – butter or peanut oil
• One onion
• Four or five nice carrots
• A couple nice tart apples – Braeburns are my favorite, but Granny Smith are also nice
• Pumpkin -- about 2 cups mashed, or one 15 oz can
• Vegetable broth (about 2 cups)
• Salt, pepper, thyme
• Milk or half & half

Dice your onion, and sauté it in the fat in your big soup kettle on a medium-low heat while you peel and cut up the carrots and apples. Cut them up fairly small -- about half-inch cubes? 

Add these to the onions, stir good, and then add in about a cup of water along with the two cups of vegetable broth.  Turn the heat up to medium-high until it boils, then stir thoroughly and reduce to a simmer.

Add in the salt, pepper, and thyme.  Let it simmer for thirty or forty minutes – until the apples and carrots are soft.

Then use either your immersion blender to puree the mix, or sieve out the carrots and apples with a slotted spoon, putting them in a blender or in a big bowl if you don’t have a blender.  Adding a little broth, blend or mash them smooth as you can. Return to the soup kettle.

Stir in the mashed pumpkin.  Heat to simmering.  You can let it sit at this stage (with a lid on) for a while, or even freeze it for later use.

Just before serving, add in the milk or the half & half, and heat until hot (don’t boil!).

Serve with bread or popovers.  Very tasty and kind of a health food too.

If you want to, you can roast the seeds with a little oil and salt.  They’re delicious.