Due to overwhelming popular demand (i.e., somebody asked) here it is.
3 cups chicken stock or broth
1 cup heavy or whipping cream
1 15-oz. can pure pumpkin
1 tbsp. Splenda/brown sugar blend
1 tsp. ground cumin
1 tbsp. red chile powder (I use “Hot”)
1/2 tsp. ground coriander
1/8 tsp. ground nutmeg
In a medium-sized pot, bring chicken stock and heavy cream to a boil.
Whisk in canned pumpkin, Splenda/brown sugar blend, red chile powder, coriander, cumin, and nutmeg. Reduce heat to medium and simmer until soup thickens slightly and flavors blend, about 15 minutes. Season to taste with salt and pepper.
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Adapted from this recipe I found on teh Interwebs.
Notes: For followers of a low glycemic-index diet (which I serious need to resume being, and fast!) and SuperFoods
It’s a hearty soup – you could probably tell. It’s popular with the SF crowd as a comfort food, especially on our more wintry winter nights.
Feel free to monkey with this recipe to suit your own taste. I did.
The red chile powder I use comes from my favorite local-growers market, the Fruit Basket, which I naturally call furuba. It’s beautiful stuff, dark and rich and velvety. Unless you live in Albuquerque you won’t find this particular brand; if you want to make this soup right, seek out a Mexican bodega or a specialty store with a good selection of ethnic foods. The “chili powder” they peddle in the spice section of your local supermarket is not a Mexican condiment, it’s a crime against humanity.
If you don’t want to use the Splenda mix try a couple tablespoons of plain old brown sugar.
It’s astonishingly hard to find chicken broth without starch in it, let alone high fructose death syrup and God knows what unholy crap. Why they put that in chicken freakin’ broth is beyond me. The last two times I made it I made my own chicken stock. Which is fairly easy and if you Google it yourself you can browse around and find a method that suits you, so I won’t even bother posting any links.
If you wanted to toss in some garlic salt, or crush a clove or two of fresh garlic and put that in, I won’t stop you. It adds richness. It doesn’t add any garlic taste I can detect. Then again I eat a lot of garlic.
Anyway: it’s easy, it’s good. If you’re not revolted by pumpkins, or at least the concept of pumpkin soup, and especially if you like a bit of zing in what could otherwise be kinda bland, why not try making it yourself?
Recommended reading:
The Glycemic-Load Diet: A powerful new program for losing weight and reversing insulin resistance
SuperFoods Rx: Fourteen Foods That Will Change Your Life
As always, if you buy these books by clicking the links above, while you’re helping yourself, you’ll also be helping this site and me. Thanks!
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Thank you!
My pleasure, HC. Hope you’ll keep reading now you got it.
Finished Busted Flush this past weekend. It was a very fun read. And I would continue to read this blog even w/out the recipe.
Oh! Awesome! THANK YOU!
What do you think about using Butternut Squash or Acorn Squash? I have that a-plenty and fresh. But I could always buy a can of pumpkin, too.
And what in the world is a brown sugar-Splenda blend?
HC – glad you liked Busted Flush.
Sara – it’s, well, that. The actual product appears to be called “Brown Sugar Blend,” being subtitled, A Mix of SPLENDA™ Brand Sweetener & Brown Sugar. Supposedly each tablespoon equals two tablespoons of brown sugar. It certainly serves well for me; I’d note that whether I use the blend or just brown sugar I use less than the recipe I adapted calls for, and it’s always plenty sweet.
As for Butternut or Acorn Squash, damfino. I don’t have vast experience with either. I think they wouldn’t have the body of the pumpkin soup, and they still might taste good used instead of pumpkin.
I suspect they might taste better with green chile. Can’t say for sure. May give ‘em a try.
Canned pumpkin, meanwhile, supposedly has the same nutrient value as stuff you painstakingly stew and mush up yourself. It certainly works for me. Unless you object to the canned stuff, why not go ahead and give it a try?
When you and Matt come through again I can hook you up with both the red chile powder I use and green chile powder I use in, well, almost everything.
Sara: According to Alton Brown, butternut, acorn, pumpkin, and most other winter squashes can stand in well for each other (though subtleties will ensue). The sole exception is spaghetti squash, for obvious topological/textural reasons.
I bet this would be even better if the squash were oven-roasted, which you want to do with fresh squash anyway. For an even more intense pumpkin-ey taste, also take (perhaps roast – briefly!) the seeds and scrapings from cleaning the squash, and simmer into the broth, straining them out before finishing the soup – the scrapings and seeds are INTENSELY flavored (THIS tip is courtesy of “America’s Test Kitchen”) Roasted pumpkin seeds would also make a nice garnish.
For what it’s worth, Swanson’s sells a boxed natural or organic (I forget) chicken broth that’s gotten good reviews (it’s really canned, but, you know…, in a box). Don’t know how offensive the ingredient list is, I suppose if they use NATURAL starch, they may be no better, but it may be worth a look.
Of course, Victor’s way is MUCH easier.
L, who probably watches too much “food network”
Hey, Lord Larry! Thanks for the tips. Interesting info about the acorn and butternut squash, about which I admit I know little.
My friends Kathy and Steve introduced me to Alton Brown over Christmas. Pretty amusing.
OOTD I’ll probably try using fresh pumpkin along the lines you suggest. Just for fun: the soup tastes good as it is and has the full pumpkin nutrient value. The roasted seeds and scrapings might add something worthwhile: worth a try.
While I’ve neglected them (along with, candidly, the whole low-starch/low-GL thing) for far too long, roasted pumpkin seeds are darned good. Plus you can season them to taste, as you can popcorn: I favor garlic salt and green chile powder (surprise!), and mean to try them with curry sometime soon. Actually the seeds from spaghetti squash can be roasted and munched as snacks as well and aren’t easy, at least for me, to tell from pumpkin seeds. You can, I believe, get packages of pumpkin seeds for a reasonable price at Fruit Basket, my fave produce place.
Speaking of spaghetti squash, I use it for, yes, starch-free spaghetti. I need to suck it down and make my own no-starch/no-HFCS spaghetti sauce – and if you trust Paul Newman, read the ingredients on his spaghetti sauce sometime. Anyway, as a pasta sub spaghetti squash is good microwaved – while Alton Brown and my own culinary hero, Tony Bourdain, might screech, it’s functionally a very efficient way of steaming them. (I may defame Tony, who’s pretty results-oriented.)
As for the Swanson’s “organic” chicken broth, I seem to recall that when I was making the soup for Thanksgiving, when I was cooking to accommodate people with potentially lethal allergies to wheat and corn (and my own prejudice against starch), I found to my fury it contained something noxious. I don’t remember what and I admit I may be mistaken. I’m pretty sure you can get starch and HFCS free chicken broth (which, again, needs those things why?) someplace like Whole Foods, if you’re willing to pay as if it were liquid gold. But you might have to descend to vegetarian broth, which would be last-ditch for me.
Not that I’ve anything against vegetarians. They’re very tasty, grilled with some garlic butter.