One of the quickest and easiest meals ever. It´s also healthy, cheap and delicious. So no wonder this pumpkin soup is one of my fall favourites. I hope you´ll like it, too!
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One of the things I love most about this simple soup is its flexibility: You can enjoy it as it is, but you can also have it with different toppings. Moreover, you can easily convert it into a somewhat more refined dish by adding just a few ingredients. However, we´ll begin with the basic recipe.
German Pumpkin Recipes –
No Pumpkin Spice Involved!
This is, by the way, a typically German pumpkin dish. Germans use pumpkins mostly for savory dishes. And we don´t normally use Pumpkin Spice. As far as I know, you can´t even buy that as a ready-made spice mixture in Germany!
You can use any pumpkin or squash that has orange, sweet and a little “dry” flesh like Butternut or Hokkaido. Sweet Dumpling, Fairytale or Jarrahdale pumpkins, Bishop´s Hat are also suitable. It may depend on which part of the world you live in! While writing this post, I realized that the pumpkins I can buy in any German grocery store may sometimes not be easily bought elsewhere (and vice versa).
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Different countries, different pumpkins
You may want some information on pumpkin and squash varieties you can most likely buy in your country. For example, I found this introduction to some of the pumpkin varieties that are common in the USA and another one on pumpkin sorts in Britain. And here´s where you can find out about pumpkins in Germany (you can also order seeds there, which I have not tried, though).
My personal favourite pumpkin for pumpkin soup is the Hokkaido Pumpkin, also known as Uchiki Kuri. It´s also the most popular pumpkin in Germany. There are good reasons for this!
Advantages of the Hokkaido Pumpkin
The first reason for Uchiki Kuri´s popularity is, obviously, its taste. It is somewhere in between sweet potato and carrots, mild and sweet at the same time. The flesh is dense and a little floury when boiled or baked, almost like mashed potatoes. While the non-watery consistency provides for a richness of taste, it also makes a Hokkaido squash a good value purchase as you don´t have to pay for a lot of water. If it´s too dry for you, just add water while cooking.
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The second reason is that you don´t need to peel it – which makes this pumpkin soup even quicker and easier to cook! The skin of Hokkaido Squash becomes really soft when it´s cooked or baked. Only if the one you got happens to have “scars” (raised beige spots or scratches that feel like wood – they are caused by damages to the skin while growing), you should cut those off.
A third advantage is that the Hokkaido Suash comes in different sizes, from little more than fist-size to about the size of a head. This is particularly great for me as I tend to be rather forgetful – with the Uchiki Kuri bought at the proper size for my purpose right away, I don´t end up with half a pumpkin rotting away in my fridge…
Let me also mention the gorgeous color and the fact that you can easily grow this squash even in a small garden, in fact even in a pot on the balcony. It has no special requirements other than a warm, sunny place, fertile soil and lots of water.
Nutritional Value
The nutritional value of the Hokkaido Pumpkin is outstanding:
Its bright orange color immediately points to its high content of Beta-Carotene, which the body converts to Vitamin A. Despite its sweet taste and floury consistency, its content of carbohydrates is relatively low (12%). It is also uncommonly rich in vitamins and minerals.
So let´s move on to the actual recipe! It´s a great beginners´recipe because it is so easy to cook. It is also great for busy families – there is not really much to do and kids may like to help cutting the pumpkin and potatoes. It´s also very much suitable as baby food (in this case, add salt only after filling the baby´s bowl with unsalted soup). And it doesn´t contain any fancy ingredients, everything should be easily available.
Simple Pumpkin Soup
For a more refined alternative, you only need to make a few minor changes which you can find below.
Ingredients (as a full meal for two adults)
Pumpkin (Hokkaido or similar, see above) – about 500 g before removing the seeds
Potatoes – about 350-400 g before peeling
One medium sized onion
Butter (unsalted) – about two tablespoons
Salt – about half a teaspoon
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As you can see, exact measuring is not necessary. You can also shift the amounts of pumpkin and potatoes more towards one or the other or even replace the potatoes by pumpkin altogether if you want the soup to be more low-carb. This works especially well if you can get a Green Hokkaido.
What to do
1. Cut the pumpkin in half, remove seeds and “threads” with a spoon. Cutting the pumpkins is done most easily with a small (!), pointed, sharp knife.
2. Cut each half into slices (about 1-2 cm length), then peel if necessary. If it´s a Hokkaido Pumpkin, no peeling is needed.
3. Cut the slices into pieces (1-2 cm).
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4. Peel the potatoes and the onion and cut them into pieces, too.
5. Put butter into a pot and melt it.
6. Add all ingredients and fry them for a minute or two. Stir well!
7. Add water. You will need about two cups. The pot should be filled with water until the top 1,5 cm of the ingredients remain dry.
8. Bring everything to a boil with the lid closed, then turn down to medium heat and leave it boiling for 15 minutes. Do check from time to time tomake sure the water has not evaporated. If it has, just add a little more water.
9. The ingredients should now be soft so you can mash them up easily. If that is not yet the case, just leave to boil for a few more minutes. Mash everything up. Do this with a potato masher – if you don´t have one, you can use a fork, but this will take a little more time. Do NOT use an electric blender (anything that consists about half or more of potatoes will become disgustingly slimy if you use a blender).
Eintopf – Feed your family using just one pot!
This is the type of soup that Germans call Eintopf (“one-pot”), which means it is only a little bit more liquid than potato mash would be, so it is supposed to be the main course or even the only course of your meal. If you don´t like it that way, you can either add more water (and accordingly, a little bit more salt, too) – or you can use even less water and have it as a side dish with sausages, a roast or fish.
Enjoy your soup as it is or choose one of the following
Toppings for Pumpkin Soup
The German standard soup topping
Butter and fresh herbs: After filling your plate with pumpkin soup, take as much butter as you would like and place it in the middle of your soup. Cut some fresh herbs and sprinkle them over the butter or over all of your soup. Parsley and chives would be the German default herbs, but recently, I was pleasantly surprised by the taste of rosemary and thyme (both of them have a very strong taste so you should not use too much of them, while parsley and chives can be used abundantly). Wild herbs like dandelion leaves, chickweed or wild garlic can be used as well – but do make sure you know which ones are actually edible and gather them from as clean a place as possible, then wash them well.
Alternative Suggestions
Sourcream: The easies one. Just add some sourcream, that´s it! Depending on where you live, you may replace sourcream by créme fraiche, Schmand, tejföl, smetana or the like.
Croutons: To be honest, I don´t know how to make original french croutons, but this is how we do it: Just cut some leftover bread into cubes. In many parts of the world, it will be white wheat bread, which obviously works great – but this can be done with sourdough rye bread or even German “grain bread” as well (I would not use Pumpernickel, though, it may be too sweet and will probably not become crispy). Anyway, just cut it up, melt some butter in a pan, then fry the bread cubes until they look brown and crispy.
Shredded cheese is an option, too. I recommend Cheddar but Gouda will be good as well, and you may just want to try your favourite cheese on top of your pumpkin soup.
I wonder if anywhere outside of the German-speaking countries there is an equivalent to “Backerbsen/Mehlerbsen/Suppenperlen”. They are little deep-fried drops of dough that taste delicious with soup! As they are rather difficult to make, I prefer to buy them ready-made, though.
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Festive Pumpkin Soup
For a more refined alternative, you only need to make some minor changes to the simple recipe above:
- Do use the clove of garlic. Either cut it into very small pieces, squish it with the flat side of a knife or use a garlic press. Add shortly before mashing the vegetables (do NOT add the garlic at the beginning).
- Replace half of the water with pure orange juice (make sure it´s not too sweet, if in doubt you might press it yourself).
- Add about one teaspoon of freshly ground ginger together with the garlic.
For this pumpkin soup I recommend sourcream (creme fraiche etc.) as a topping.
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