Today we wanted to make some soup but didn’t feel like staying with a pot cooking stuff up. We wanted to take a soothing bath and come out finding our veggies ready for us!! So, we tried the oven method! This not only is easier to prepare but also eliminates the urge to add oil to fry instead of grilling our veggies! Oven baked is always advertised as the healthier option, right? So let’s go with that!!
We had a couple of different pumpkins here but I am sure that any pumpkin could have worked for this. We used butter squash, which in my opinion makes the soup creamier, and as an extra benefit has way fewer calories and is exceptionally high in Vitamin A (all three pumpkins are but butter squash has twice the amount!!), the normal orange pumpkin, and a yellow pumpkin which has even fewer calories than butter squash and still has more Vitamin A than the orange one! Basically, the poor orange one is the least good of all three, however still great, that’s just how good the other two are! So let’s have a look at how this easy recipe goes!
Ingredients
- Pumpkin (Butter Squash, Yellow, and Orange Pumpkin)
- Pumpkin Seeds (optional)
- Onions
- Walnuts
- Orange Peel
- Lemon Juice
- Pumpkin Spice
- Milk (Hazelnut Milk)
Method
so basically place your pumpkin and onions in a tray and bake until the pumpkin is nice and soft and the onion looks dried out and maybe has a little golden color to its edges. For some extra flavor and benefits, leave some cleaned pumpkin seeds to roast too. Now peel the pumpkin, this will make your job way easier as now you can simply scoop the soft fruit from its peel (yes, pumpkin is a fruit too… so many ‘vegetables’ are a fruit I’m not even surprised anymore!!).
Now in a nice bowl place your cleaned pumpkins, pumpkin seeds, onions, walnuts, some orange peel (zest), lemon juice, and pumpkin spice (follow the link to make your own pumpkin spice), and blend everything up. I like to add my milk last so I can get the right texture (I like my soup very thick, however, that’s all up to you), I also do suggest some kind of ‘nutty’ milk, like hazelnut or almond for this recipe, it will add an extra level to the taste and pairs with the nutmeg (in the pumpkin spice) so well.
Now heat up in a microwave, or you will still need a pot to boil it up since the milk would have cooled down the other ingredients (unless you don’t like piping hot soup, in that case, you might be ready to go without heating), garnish if you want some extra fun with some walnuts and you’re ready to enjoy your soup!
Variations
As you can see I left mine plain, however, you can leave some walnuts chunks and some pumpkin seeds for some extra crunch. You can also make it sweeter with some honey and even a drop or two of vanilla. Ginger and turmeric are also two flavors that can be introduced here and will add some extra health benefits so maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea to give them a try. Hope you will give this recipe a go and keep yourself warm in the cold seasons! Let us know your thoughts, we would always love some feedback!