This Chipotle Pumpkin Soup is for all you spice lovers, especially those of you who’ve been making LinsFood’s chipotle paste for years!
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
Pumpkin Soup
Autumn is my favourite season, with the changing colours, dip in temperatures and all that glorious food: soups, stews and game!
We’ve had a very mild and wet start to autumn so far in 2022. This is early November and it’s only these last few days that it’s been cool enough for me to want some soup. And what better way to start soup season than pumpkin soup!
Pumpkin soup is very easy to make, basic ones only require a handful of ingredients or so. You could even shorten the process by using canned pumpkin purée. Keep the flavours simple or add spices, whatever rocks your boat.
Chipotle Pumpkin Soup
So you know I like my chillies. And I do rather love my homemade chipotle paste, a pretty popular recipe according to Google search. I have so many recipes that use this chipotle paste, like the following.
I picked up a couple of pumpkins last week for cooking up a tagine and some soup.
A couple of days later, I was running my weekly chilli recipes cooking class and we just happened to make chipotle paste and chipotles in adobo. Cue lightbulb moment, and I just knew it was going to be a winning combination!
The result: this Chipotle Pumpkin Soup is a smoky, spicy and creamy soup that I just couldn’t get enough of. Honestly, the best pumpkin soup I’ve ever tasted! I had it for lunch and dinner, it was so good!
The Recipe
Our chipotle pumpkin soup is pretty easy to make, the only hard part is the chopping of the pumpkin, one of my most hated jobs. But needs must and all that. Some grocers sell prepared pumpkin, whether in cubes or wedges, so you can use that to save you some time and elbow grease, if you like.
We start off with roasting our pumpkin, a step that adds smoky, caramel notes and depth to any pumpkin soup.
This is what we’ll be doing to cook up our Mexican inspired pumpkin soup today:
- chop up the pumpkin.
- season the pumpkin cubes with olive oil, salt and chipotle paste and roast for 30 minutes.
- sauté the aromatics, add the stock and cook for 10 minutes.
- add the pumpkin, heat through then purée.
- add the cream, heat through and check seasoning.
That’s it. You then dish it up and top with a small drizzle of cream and a tiny dollop of chipotle paste.
Ingredients
Let’s take a look at the 4 main ingredients: the pumpkin, chipotle paste, stock and cream.
Pumpkin
Fresh pumpkins are very easy to find in many places, once autumn comes around. You want to look for cooking or culinary pumpkins, sometimes also called pie pumpkins.
As mentioned earlier, feel free to buy prepared pumpkins, I’ve given you the weight for both in the recipe card below.
You could also use butternut squash, kabocha squash or anything that’s sold as winter squash. If truth be told, quite often, what’s being sold as prepared pumpkin flesh or pumpkin purée is actually just what’s generally called winter squash.
Can you use frozen pumpkins? Yes, absolutely. I believe that many will require you to cook from frozen, so just follow the instructions in the recipe card below to roast the pumpkin.
Chipotle Paste
If you want to cook up this chipotle pumpkin soup recipe, than the chipotle paste is non negotiable, right?
Homemade chipotle paste is so very easy to cook up. All you need is the chipotles which should be found easily in shops that sell south American produce. I get them online, often from Amazon Prime when I need them urgently, as 2 of my favourite sellers have Amazon storefronts. Here’s my global affiliate link for them:
Can you use shop bought chipotle paste? Sure, but thousands of LinsFood readers will tell you that nothing beats the homemade version. I’ve even had a couple of brands telling me that they’ve used my recipe as inspiration for their version!
If you can’t get your hands on chipotles, use 1 tsp of hot smoked paprika, as the best substitute to make our spicy pumpkin soup. Replacing it with a regular chilli paste or fresh chillies may give you the heat, but it won’t really have that signature smoky aroma.
The Stock
You can use vegetable stock (vegetable broth) or chicken stock (chicken broth) to make our chipotle pumpkin soup. I suppose it makes sense to keep it vegetarian and use the former. Having said that, given the choice, I always opt for chicken stock, as to me, it has more depth.
1 stock cube or stock pot should suffice for the recipe amount here. You can make up the seasoning with salt at the end of cooking, if you need it.
Cream
Pumpkin flesh is naturally sweet and creamy. When making pumpkin soup, we take this further by adding some form of cream.
The most popular choice is double cream (heavy cream), what I’m using here today. Double cream gives you a very creamy soup. If that’s not your thing, you could also use single cream for a slightly lighter affair, in flavour and calories and fat.
Make this a Vegan pumpkin soup by using a dairy-free cream, or coconut milk. The latter produces an absolutely delicious pumpkin soup and is very popular even amongst non vegans, especially when using spices like cumin, turmeric or just the good old curry powder.
How to Serve?
This is easy, right? With some crusty bread on the side and lots of butter for the bread! Because butter makes everything taste better? I know, I know, I say that about chilli, lime juice and black pepper too! And cheese!
Once you’ve ladled your soup into bowls, drizzle a little of the cream over and top with a tiny blob of chipotle paste. Or, just leave the chipotle paste in a small dish on the side for the daredevils.
How long will Pumpkin Soup Last?
Store any leftover pumpkin soup in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 3 days.
It also freezes well. Place a cling film that touches the surface of the soup before freezing it.
And that’s it. Shall we get our aprons on?
If you enjoy the recipe, drop me a comment and let me know. And if you are feeling like a star, don’t forget that 5-star rating!😉
If you make this recipe, post it on Instagram and tag me @azlinbloor and hashtag it #linsfood.
Lin xx
More Pumpkin Recipes
More Soups on LinsFood
Chipotle Pumpkin Soup
Ingredients
- 1 medium pumpkin (about 1.5kg/3.3 oz) prepped weight about 800g/1.7 lb
- 2-3 Tbsp chipotle paste click for easy homemade recipe
- 2 Tbsp EV olive oil you could also use salted butter
- 1 large onion
- 2 medium cloves garlic
- 750 ml vegetable or chicken stock
- 125 ml double cream (thick cream) single will work too, see article above
- ¼ tsp salt if needed
To Finish
- 1-2 Tbsp chipotle paste
- 2 Tbsp double cream
Instructions
Roast the Pumpkin
- Pre heat the oven to 200°C/400°F.Cut the pumpkin in half with a very sharp knife.
- Then scoop out the seeds and stringy bits with a spoon, and discard.
- Lay the pumpkin cut side down, and start cutting down in wedges. You could, if you wanted, take the skin off first at this stage. I do this interchangeably.Lay your wedges down on their sides, and slice the skin off.
- Chop the wedges up into cubes and place them on a baking tray.
- Mix 2 Tbsp of the chipotle paste, 1 Tbsp of the olive oil and ¼ tsp of salt in a small bowl. Rub this paste well onto the cubes.Roast in the pre heated oven for 25 minutes until a knife glides through.Take them out and set aside.
Let's make the Chipotle Pumpkin Soup
- Peel, halve and thinly slice the onion.Peel and roughly chop up the garlic.
- Heat the olive oil in a saucepan on medium heat and tip the sliced onions in. Stir, then reduce the heat to low and cook for 5 minutes, stirring occasionally.
- Add the garlic, cook for 30 seconds, then pour the stock in. Bring the heat back up to medium and bring the stock to a simmer.Reduce the heat to low and cook for 10 minutes, uncovered.
- Add the roasted pumpkin in, bring to a simmer on medium and cook for 2 minutes.
- Take it off the heat and using a handheld immersion blender, purée the whole thing until you have a smooth soup.You could also pour the soup into your usual blender to blend it to a purée, then pour it back into the saucepan. Make sure your blender is heatproof.
- Place the saucepan back on medium heat and pour in the cream, stirring. Bring it to a low simmering point (tiny bubbles) and cook for 2 minutes to heat it all up.Taste and add salt if necessary. I find that I usually need just a pinch more salt. Finish off with some black pepper if you like. I don't bother because of the chipotle paste.
- Serve your chipotle pumpkin soup in bowls and drizzle a little cream all over and just a tiny dollop of chipotle paste on top.Have some chipotle paste on the side for those who want it hotter.
Something what I was looking for , have got chipotle paste and was wondering what all I can use it in and best that you have made a pumpkin soup from this, a good use of my homegrown pumpkins
Sweet, spicy, smoky, creamy – this pumpkin soup sounds like the ultimate comfort food for cold nights and a great choice to start any festive dinner.