Meatless Monday – Roast Pumpkin and Honey Soup

When it comes to fruit and vegetables, meal planning is key.

You can save a lot of money buying fresh but if you don’t keep on top of things then what you buy can quickly turn and you just end up throwing cash in the bin. Deciding how much to buy can be a precise art. As I’m sure I will write about more in other articles, you want to visit the grocery store as infrequently as possible. You will always spend more overall on lots of small trips rather than one big shop. But if you buy too much of one thing you’re sure to see wastage

However, there are exceptions to this rule. One of them for me is pumpkin. Pumpkins are huge, cheap and seem to last forever. If you get a big one, it can sometimes seem like you are putting pumpkin in every meal and just not getting through it.

This recipe is my go-to when I just want to get leftover pumpkin out of my fridge. As with most soups this is ideal because it freezes so well that it doesn’t really matter how much of it you make.

Ingredients (for four)

• 1kg of pumpkin cut into 1-2 inch chunks with skin on (separate the pips as well)
• 2 brown onions
• Keens curry powder
• Honey
• Roughly 1 litre of vegie stock (or chicken of you’re not fussed about the vegetarian thing)
• Olive oil
• Butter
• Sriracha sauce (optional)
• Greek yoghurt to garnish

Steps

1. Heat the oven to 220 degrees celsius.
2. Put chopped pumpkin and onion, peeled and cut into wedges, in a baking tray. Drizzle olive oil over everything then a tablespoon or so of curry powder and drizzle a couple tablespoons of honey, then mix so the pumpkin and onion are fully coated. This is all flavouring so measurements are only rough guides. Do it to your own tastes (that’s what I do). Keeping the pumpkin skin on is also key to this soup. When roasted it will add a deep caramelized flavour to the soup and, like the skin of many fruit and vegetables, it is packed with a lot of great nutrients and goodies.
3. Roast the pumpkin until the pumpkin is completely soft and the tops are starting to crisp and brown.
4. Put the contents of the baking tray into a pot on the stove (don’t leave anything, scrape in all the crispy and crunchy goodies). Put in about a litre of stock, bring to boil and then reduce to a consistence simmer. Let the pumpkin break up for a while. How much stock you use will depend on how thick you want your soup. I litre will give you a quite a thick liquid.
5. While the pumpkin is simmering, melt some butter and mix in the Sriracha sauce is using. Toss the pumpkin seeds in this mixture and pop it in the oven to crisp then up They go from crispy to burnt in a matter of seconds so monitor them closely. This will be used as a garnish that adds a nice bit of crunch to the soup and is also a really yummy way to use more of the pumpkin.
6. Blend the pumpkin, onions and stock into a smooth mixture.
7. Put the soup into some bowls and top with some roasted seeds and a dap of Greek yoghurt.