Creamy Roasted Pumpkin Soup
This pumpkin soup recipe is creamy AND healthy! It calls for roasted pumpkin for maximum flavor. This pumpkin soup is great with sandwiches and salads!
Updated by Kathryne Taylor on August 5, 2024
Meet my favorite pumpkin soup recipe. It’s super creamy (thanks mostly to the pumpkin, with a little help from coconut milk or cream) yet plenty healthy, too. It’s gently spiced, but I made sure that the pumpkin flavor shines above the rest.
This dairy-free pumpkin soup would be a welcome addition to your holiday table. It would be equally at home with a soup or sandwich from fall through winter.
It’s easy to make and the leftovers taste even better the next day. So, you could certainly make the soup a day in advance. Don’t be intimidated by the ingredient list—this soup only requires basic pantry ingredients!
This soup was inspired by my recent trip to Portland. While I was there, I went to lunch with my baby brother and our friend Bill. I’ve written about Bill over the years—in summary, Bill beat leukemia with the help of my stem cells. He’s the toughest guy I know.
Now we’re friends who share the same immune system and we finally got to meet a few weeks ago. (You can join the registry here.)
We shared lunch and an afternoon at Multnomah Falls. It was a damp, gray fall day in the Pacific Northwest and it was perfect.
Bill picked The Picnic House for lunch. You really have to go next time you’re in Portland. “Unique” doesn’t begin to describe it—the restaurant feels like an old school theater inside, with different scenes set up in every corner and amazing food everywhere the eye can see.
I was tempted to order every item on the menu, but after much deliberation, I finally settled on a small soup, salad and sandwich. I might just have to recreate all three of them for the blog (so good), but homemade pumpkin soup seemed most timely.
I can’t say that my version is exactly the same, but it is equally satisfying and fresh. It’s utterly delicious in its own right.
Pumpkin Options
This pumpkin soup recipe includes instructions on how to roast fresh pumpkin, for maximum pumpkin flavor. Canned pumpkin purée also works well, if you’re in a time crunch. See the recipe notes for details!
Please let me know how this recipe turns out for you in the comments. I’m always so eager for your feedback. If you’re craving more cozy fall soups, don’t miss my butternut soup, lentil soup or minestrone.
Watch How to Make Pumpkin Soup
Creamy Roasted Pumpkin Soup
This pumpkin soup recipe is creamy AND healthy! It calls for roasted pumpkin for maximum flavor. This roasted pumpkin soup recipe would look lovely on your holiday dinner table, and leftovers would go great with sandwiches or salads the next day. Recipe yields 4 bowls or 6 cups of soup.
Ingredients
- 4 tablespoons olive oil, divided
- One 4-pound sugar pie pumpkin
- 1 large yellow onion, chopped
- 4 large or 6 medium garlic cloves, pressed or minced
- ½ teaspoon sea salt
- ½ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon ground nutmeg
- ⅛ teaspoon cloves
- Tiny dash of cayenne pepper (optional, if you like spice)
- Freshly ground black pepper
- 4 cups (32 ounces) vegetable broth
- ½ cup full fat coconut milk or heavy cream
- 2 tablespoons maple syrup or honey
- ¼ cup pepitas (green pumpkin seeds)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425 degrees Fahrenheit and line a baking sheet with parchment paper for easy cleanup. Carefully halve the pumpkin and scoop out the seeds (you can roast the seeds if you’d like—see note—but you won’t need them for this recipe).
- Slice each pumpkin halve in half to make quarters. Brush or rub 1 tablespoon olive oil over the flesh of the pumpkin and place the quarters, cut sides down, onto the baking sheet. Roast for 35 minutes or longer, until the orange flesh is easily pierced through with a fork. Set it aside to cool for a few minutes.
- Heat the remaining 3 tablespoons olive oil in a large Dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot over medium heat. Once the oil is shimmering, add onion, garlic and salt to the skillet. Stir to combine. Cook, stirring occasionally, until onion is translucent, about 8 to 10 minutes. In the meantime, peel the pumpkin skin off the pumpkins and discard the skin.
- Add the pumpkin flesh, cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, cayenne pepper (if using), and a few twists of freshly ground black pepper. Use your stirring spoon to break up the pumpkin a bit. Pour in the broth. Bring the mixture to a boil, then reduce heat and simmer for about 15 minutes, to give the flavors time to meld.
- While the soup is cooking, toast the pepitas in a medium skillet over medium-low heat, stirring frequently, until fragrant, golden and making little popping noises. You want them to be nice and toasty, but not burnt. Transfer pepitas to a bowl to cool.
- Once the pumpkin mixture is done cooking, stir in the coconut milk and maple syrup. Remove the soup from heat and let it cool slightly. You can use an immersion blender to blend this soup in the pot. I prefer to use my stand blender, which yields the creamiest results—working in batches, transfer the contents of the pan to a blender (do not fill your blender past the maximum fill line!). Securely fasten the blender’s lid and use a kitchen towel to protect your hand from steam escaping from the top of the blender as you purée the mixture until smooth. Transfer the puréed soup to a serving bowl and repeat with the remaining batches.
- Taste and adjust if necessary (I thought the soup was just right as is, but you might want to add more coconut milk for extra creaminess/milder flavor, or maple syrup to make it a little sweeter).
- Ladle the soup into individual bowls. Sprinkle pepitas over the soup and serve. Let leftover soup cool completely before transferring it to a proper storage container and refrigerating it for up to 4 days (leftovers taste even better the next day!). Or, freeze this soup for up to 3 months.
Notes
Soup inspired by the pumpkin soup at The Picnic House in Portland and roughly adapted from my curried butternut soup.
Make it dairy free: Use coconut milk, not heavy cream.
Make it vegan: Use coconut milk and maple syrup.
Change it up: Kabocha squash works instead of pumpkin, and I bet butternut squash would work well, too.
If you want to use canned pumpkin: Instead of roasting the pumpkin, you can substitute two to three cans of pumpkin purée (15 ounces each). Just skip steps 1 and 2, and add two cans of pumpkin purée in step 4. You’ll still want to blend the soup for the best texture; add more pumpkin purée at that point if you’d like thicker soup.
How to roast pumpkin seeds: Pick off all the flesh bits from the seeds and discard them. I like to do this in a colander under running water. Pat the seeds dry with a tea towel or paper towels. Toss the seeds with a little olive oil, a sprinkle of salt and any other seasonings that sound good (I tossed my pumpkin seeds with 1 teaspoon brown sugar and ½ teaspoon curry powder). Toss to coat. Line a small, rimmed baking sheet with parchment paper and arrange the pumpkin seeds in a single layer. Roast for 13 to 16 minutes, until the seeds are fragrant and toasty.
Nutrition
The information shown is an estimate provided by an online nutrition calculator. It should not be considered a substitute for a professional nutritionist’s advice. See our full nutrition disclosure here.
Creamy, silky, beautiful orange color and lovely spices. The garlic comes through nicely.
I prepared this for Thanksgiving pre-dinner, something hot and welcoming.
Double batch. I roasted two sugar pumpkins and added two cans of puree since I wanted a heartier, richer texture.
Really creamy and delicious! We added some fresh sage (3-4 leaves) from our garden as well as some recently dried oregano. And not quite sure what kind of pumpkin we used, but we grew it as well! All in all an easy (slightly time consuming) recipe. It was fun to do with my hubby on a rainy Saturday morning :) Love all your recipes, Kate!
This soup is great- my family & I loved it and I thought it was easy. I did add pumpkin spice instead of cayenne. The best part is I doubled the recipe and put a lot in the freezer for later. I used real pumpkins
If you want to save the hassle of roasting and blending the pumpkin, an 800 mL (27 ounce) can of pumpkin puree works wonderfully. Experiment with the toppings! Some crumbled turkey bacon went fantastically with this soup!
I love this recipe and have followed numerous times. Tonight I made it with a kabocha squash and it turned out fantastic. Kabocha is sweeter than pumpkin so less maple syrup can be used if desired. To make more savory, I drizzled balsamic glaze on top.
I make this soup regularly in the winter (in Australia) and it is amazing. Question – can this be made low fodmap? I have a friend who is post partumn and want to make this for her, but she can not have onion or garlic. Can these be omitted ok? Thank you!
Made this recipe many, many times. Sometimes adding sweet potatoes or carrots. It’s perfectly seasoned and creamy, has a warmth in it. Perfectly with the colder weather.
What kind of stand blender do you own? Thx
I made this soup and love it! The spice blend is delicious and very soothing. Suggested the recipe to friends.
I have your cook book and love your recipes!
I am making this soup today for the first time on a very cold NY day! So far, so good! I haven’t tasted the soup yet, though it looks and smells amazing!
I suggest stating in the ingredient list if the green pumpkin seeds in the recipe are the seeds from the pumpkin we are toasting or if you suggest we purchase pumpkin seeds in the grocery store.
Also, helpful if you provide specifics regarding how many cups/grams of cooked pumpkin are needed for the recipe.
I don’t typically read all the paragraphs written or all the comments so it would be helpful to have this info up front in the ingredient list for those of us who jump straight to the recipe.
I live in Costa Rica and we have been seeing an unfamiliar type of pumpkin being sold everywhere. I had to buy one, but didn’t know what to do with it. I found your recipe – and this is delicious! There was enough liquid I didn’t need to add the coconut milk and I don’t feel like the recipe was lacking for the omission. I’m glad my husband is out of town so I don’t have to share. :-)