Pumpkin Soup Cooked In a Pumpkin – Laughter Saved the Day

Pumpkin Soup Cooked In a Pumpkin – A Drama/Comedy in Three Acts

I’ve always liked the idea of making and then serving pumpkin soup cooked in a pumpkin. So, when my stunning silvery-green heirloom Jarrahdale pumpkin was ready to cook, I was excited. With its thick-flesh, a Jarrahdale pumpkin would hold up well in the oven. Yes, this was the perfect opportunity for cooking pumpkin soup in a pumpkin.

A Drama/Comedy in Three Acts

I so wanted this pumpkin soup cooked in a pumpkin to be wonderful. Instead, it was rather both a drama and a comedy in three acts. From cutting too small of a lid, to greatly increasing the baking time, to burnt pumpkin seeds, to savoring the rich broth.

Act One: too small of a lid, little room for soup, 3 hours to cook

• As this was my first time, I hadn’t thought about the importance of cutting the lid large enough to get my hand inside to remove all the seeds and strings. After carving a larger hole, my “lid” no longer fit. (Notice the embarrassingly small lid hiding in the upper left corner of this photo.)
• Very little broth actually fit inside the pumpkin.
• At 350 degrees, it took 3 hours of baking (most recipes recommend 1 – 1 ½ hours) for the flesh to soften.
• My pumpkin weighed just under 4 pounds. Just now while writing this post, I noticed that some recipes call for a 6 to 8-pound pumpkin. Hmmm, would that mean 4 to 6 hours of baking time?
• After the pumpkin baked for an hour and a half, it began to slump a little. To keep the broth from overflowing the pumpkin, I removed about a cup of it to the pot of additional broth on the stove.
  • Intermission: any broth that did flow over the top caramelized on the bottom of the baking dish becoming  very delicious. When serving, I tilted the baking dish in order to spoon as much as I could of the caramelized broth into the soup.

Act Two: Pumpkin Seeds

• While the pumpkin soup was cooking in the oven, I painstakingly cleaned the seeds. A trusted blogger gave directions that “had been refined over many years” of roasting pumpkin seeds.
• As this was my first time, I followed her directions. 375 degrees for 25-35 minutes depending on the size of the seeds. Despite Jarrahdale pumpkin seeds being quite large, they were irreparably burned at 20 minutes.

Act Three: Serving pumpkin soup cooked in a pumpkin tableside . . . maybe not

• All of the recipes I found suggest serving pumpkin soup cooked in a pumpkin tableside. Perhaps that would work if your table is in the kitchen.
• Otherwise, carrying a baking dish or serving platter with a 6 – 8-pound pumpkin filled with hot soup from the kitchen to the dining room might be impossibly heavy as well as dangerous.
• I “carved” and served my pumpkin from the kitchen. This involved gently spooning out sections of the pumpkin flesh without collapsing the pumpkin. Unfortunately, before putting the flesh in individual soup bowls came the rather messy job of removing the tough, papery skin.
• With so little broth it was a balancing act between the broth in the pumpkin, the caramelized broth at the bottom of the baking dish, and the hot broth in a pan on the stove. Once the flavor of the pan and the pumpkin broths tasted the same, I spooned it over the pumpkin in the individual bowls.
  • Finale: the richly fragrant soup indeed tasted of pumpkin.  With the freshly grated nutmeg a fitting complement.
  • Curtain Call: A spoonful of tangy labneh (strained yogurt) made for a delicious garnish.

Production notes on the broth

All the recipes I found included lots and lots and lots of grated cheese along with cream, breadcrumbs and chicken stock. I went another direction.

Wanting the soup to taste of pumpkin, I used homemade vegetable stock and omitted the cheese and cream. Together with sautéed onion and garlic, freshly grated nutmeg, a bit of Aleppo pepper flakes, a bay leaf and salt and pepper the stage was set for a most flavorful and aromatic soup.

The broth that cooked in the pumpkin was especially delicious. Though, with so little room in the pumpkin, I cooked additional broth sans pumpkin on the stove then combined the two.

Still tempted to try this yourself?

After my experience, you, may prefer to save your gorgeous Jarrahdale pumpkins for decoration or for baking without soup inside.

That said, if you’ve ever successfully cooked pumpkin soup in a pumpkin, I’d love to learn the secrets of your success.

Laughter saved the day

With so many parts of this recipe gone awry, laughter truly saved the day.