Recipe: Roasted Pumpkin Soup with garlic and rosemary

This silky smooth roasted pumpkin soup is full of the flavours of autumn, with smoked paprika, roasted garlic and rosemary.

My Dad grows pumpkins. Not your average, run-of-the-mill, halloween carving pumpkins, but record-breakingly enormous pumpkins that can only be lifted by a fork-lift truck, and end up in the local and even national press. In fact one year a weather presenter delivered the Channel Islands weather forecast sitting on top of one of his pumpkins, that's how famous they are!

What you need to make your roasted pumpkin soup

Ingredients

Pumpkin obviously! There are two types of pumpkin around in the supermarkets at this time of year - carving and cooking. If you're here because you want to use up all the flesh you've carved out of a scary halloween-face pumpkin, go ahead - roasting is a great way to intensify the flavour and texture of a carving pumpkin. The soup will taste great. But if you want a really thick, silky and luxurious soup you will notice a difference if you use a 'cooking' pumpkin, (or butternut squash if you can't find one).

Carrots are a great way of bulking out the soup, adding sweetness and intensifying the orange colour of your soup!

Garlic is important to this soup - by roasting it in its skin it will sweeten, and flavours will mellow so you get all the lovely, garlicky goodness but not the death-breath! Don't be tempted to skimp on it here, it makes a big difference.

Smoked Paprika is one of my favourite spices, I use it a lot and it is perfect here to give just a hint of a smoky, autumnal, bonfire-night sort of aroma to this soup.

Dairy-free cream gives this soup its final, silky finishing touch. I like to use soya cream as it doesn't have a strong flavour, (my favourite is the Elmlea plant cream, found in the dairy aisle at supermarkets), but coconut or oat cream would also be fine.

Freezing or Storing your roasted pumpkin soup

As I often talk about in my soup recipes, this will freeze beautifully so do make a big batch whilst you have lots of pumpkin to use up!

I like to freeze mine in individual portions, (old margarine tubs work so well for this - just the right size for a generous single serving, and they stack really well to save space in your freezer!).

Don't forget to label and date them, or you will be playing 'guess the soup' for months to come!

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What else can I make with pumpkin?

Here are some more ideas of things to do with pumpkins from blogging friends:

• Mandy's Pumpkin, Chestnut and Cranberry Risotto from Veggielicious
• Camilla's Roast Pumpkin Seeds from Fab Food 4 All
• Rebecca's Vegan and Gluten-Free Pumpkin Pie from Glutarama
• Camilla's Pumpkin & Ginger Jam from Fab Food 4 All

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