On a blustery Autumn day, making a pumpkin soup was the obvious choice for an activity on a Saturday morning with the added reward of a hearty, hyggeligt and comforting lunch.
A quick recipe google revealed a “no chop pumpkin soup,” promising a sweeter, nuttier taste. We gave it a go as it also required very few ingredients and chopping pumpkin isn’t one of our favourite things to do.
Firstly, no chop isn’t actually no chop. The recipe recommends buying a pumpkin cut in half which we’ve never seen for sale. We still had to chop the pumpkin in half and chop up some onions, but it wasn’t an arduous task. After scooping out the seeds, we simply placed on a baking tray and threw in the onions, whole garlic cloves and drizzled with oil and seasoned with salt and pepper. These were then roasted in the oven at 180 degrees for 70 minutes. Half way through we went off piste and threw in some thyme from the garden. We stupidly threw away the seeds too. These would have been great roasted in spices for a tasty, healthy autumnal snack.
Once roasted we simply scooped the pumpkin out, squeezed the garlic out of their skins and added it to the pumpkin and whizzed it all together, onions included in a food mixer. We added milk until the soup was a good consistency, which is a hugely personal thing. One word of warning however; this recipe contained no stock and too much milk would dilute the taste we think. We also added some smoked paprika, which another time we would sprinkle over the uncooked pumpkin.
Once smooth we heated through again in a saucepan, seasoned and served with Parmesan, chilli flakes, parsley and chunky bread.
So, on reflection it was a really easy soup to make and whilst not totally no-chop, it wasn’t hard work at all. As the soup contained no stock, it needed a lot of seasoning and some smoked paprika at roasting stage for a bit of a kick and the Parmesan sprinkling really finished it off.
Most importantly, everyone enjoyed it and it was a hyggeligt moment to sit round the table whilst the wind battered around outside.