My Spicy Pumpkin Soup is one of my favorite New England fall recipes! I blend sweet pumpkin and spicy chipotle peppers for warming supper ready in 30 minutes. It's garnished with pepitas and sour cream.
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We're well familiar with how delicious pumpkin is when paired with sweet spices in pies and cookies. But have you ever tried pumpkin with smoky hot peppers?
My Spicy Pumpkin Soup does just that! It's a savory and easy to make soup, pairing earthy pumpkin purée with chipotle peppers and sauce. My family loves it on chilly fall and winter days. Chipotle pumpkin Soup is also a perfect dish to serve at Halloween parties!
My recipe has tips for adjusting the spice level to your taste, and lots of ideas for toppings, including crunchy pepitas and sour cream.
In a nutshell... 🐿️
- What this is: A smooth and hearty soup with pumpkin and spicy, smoky pepper flavor. Perfect for cool New England fall and winter days!
- You'll love this part: This pumpkin soup is ready in only 30 minutes.
- How it's made: Sauté the aromatics, then add the remaining ingredients and simmer. Purée the soup until smooth.
Jump to:
Why you'll love Spicy Pumpkin Soup
What could be better than a cozy pumpkin soup dish when the weather changes in fall? Or on a cold winter day when all you want to do is throw another chunk of wood into the woodstove and and wrap your hands around a hot bowl of soup.
Add my Spicy Pumpkin Soup recipe to your recipe box so you'll have it at hand for just these moments. It's a smooth, puréed soup that you can make with pantry ingredients, like onions, canned pumpkin, and canned chipotle peppers. And it comes together in about 30 minutes.
Since chipotle peppers will make pumpkin soup spicy, I have tips in my recipe below on how to get the soup to just the right level of heat for you.
Make this pumpkin soup for weekend lunches; you can keep it warm in a Crock Pot for get-togethers where everyone serves themselves. Or, pair this soup with roast chicken or pot roast for a hearty supper.
Hosting a Halloween get-together? Keep your monsters and witches cozy with this pumpkin soup, served out of a slow cooker where it will stay warm.
You can even make extra and freeze pumpkin chipotle Soup, so you'll have it on hand for an easy meal!
Speaking of pumpkin...
Soft Pumpkin Cookies
My family's favorite cookies! They're full of warm autumn spices and topped with a cinnamon glaze.
New England loves their pumpkins
Once the air begins to cool in New England, there are two things that appear on front porches, mailbox posts, steps, and stoops up and down every street. One of them is mums (chrysanthemums), pots of tightly-clustered flowers in autumn shades of purple, yellow, orange, and magenta. The second? Pumpkins!
(Halloween decor is a close third... in our neck of the woods, folks start decorating for Halloween early in September!)
I, too, am not immune to the allure of decking out our porch and walkway with pumpkins of all shapes and colors. They're just so dang pretty.
Of course, in New England, long before pumpkins were just seasonal decor, they were a much-relied upon food staple. Stored properly, uncut pumpkins will last for many months after harvest ends and winter snows begin to fall. Once peeled and sliced, New Englanders transformed pumpkins into stews, breads, and pies, or simply boiled or roasted them for supper. Seeds were roasted and eaten, or saved for next year's crop.
The importance of pumpkins to the early settlers is spelled out in this folk song snippet shared by the New England Historical Society:
Instead of pottage and puddings and custards and pies,
Our pumpkins and parsnips are common supplies;
We have pumpkins at morning and pumpkins at noon,
If it was not for pumpkins we should be undone!
So when fall arrives, or even just hints at arriving, don't feel bad if, like me, you immediately feel the need to head to the nearest farm stand or pumpkin patch and spend a small fortune on pumpkins great and small. Pumpkins for decorating, and pumpkins for roasting and puréeing. And pumpkin to blend into this easy Spicy Pumpkin Soup recipe.
You're just following in the footsteps of our wise New England ancestors!
I ♥ pumpkin!
Pumpkin Cranberry Hand Pies
Tart cranberry and sweet pumpkin pie filling are delicious together inside flaky pastry pockets.
🔪 How to make Spicy Pumpkin Soup
Ingredients:
- Pumpkin: Look for canned pumpkin in the baking aisle at the store. It should be 100% pure pumpkin; be careful not to grab look-alike products such as pumpkin pie filling (which contains sugar and spices) or puréed squash.
- Onions: I use regular yellow onions in this soup. Other varieties you can try include Spanish, white, or red onions. Sweet onions like Vidalia will add a hint of sweetness to the soup.
- Chipotle peppers: Find canned chipotle peppers stocked near Mexican ingredients like enchilada sauce and taco seasoning. You'll only need one pepper and some of the sauce; the rest of the peppers can be frozen to use another time.
- Garlic: Skip the jarred stuff, which has an off aftertaste, and mince your own garlic gloves instead. I really like a ribbon grater for this job; it grates up the garlic in a flash, and right over the pan.
- Chicken broth: Canned or boxed chicken broth gives the soup a savory flavor backdrop for the other ingredients.
- Vegetable oil: Use grapeseed, avocado, or another neutral oil, or extra virgin olive oil for a little flavor, to sauté the onions and garlic.
- Seasonings: All I add to this soup is a little salt and pepper, since the pumpkin and chipotles add so much flavor.
- Optional toppings: My favorite toppings for this soup are sour cream (you can also use Mexican crema or crème frâiche), toasted pumpkin seeds (pepitas), and dried cranberries. Other toppings that are good are croutons, toasted breadcrumbs, grated cheddar or Monterey jack cheese, and fresh sage leaves.
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Cook the aromatics
Sauté the diced onions and garlic in a little oil, until they're fragrant and tender.
Simmer with the other ingredients
Stir in the rest of the ingredients, including canned pumpkin, broth, and peppers. Simmer the soup.
Purée
Blend the soup to a smooth texture with an immersion (stick) blender or regular blender.
Enjoy!
Garnish the soup with toppings like sour cream, pepitas, or dried cranberries, and serve it while hot.
Another fave soup!
Parsnip Soup with Apple and Curry
Inspired by a medieval soup in Ireland, this apple and parsnip soup will chase the winter chill away!
Spicy Pumpkin Soup FAQs
Yes, you can make your own pumpkin purée and use it to make spicy pumpkin soup. Be sure to choose the right pumpkins: small sugar pie pumpkins have the best flavor for using in recipes. (Don't use those huge jack-o-lantern pumpkins!) Here's a recipe from AllRecipes on how to make your own pumpkin purée.
It's easy to make a vegetarian or vegan version of spicy pumpkin soup: just replace the chicken broth with vegetable broth or stock.
The earthy pumpkin flavor and smokiness of chipotle peppers opens this soup up to all kinds of delicious toppings and garnishes. I really like to top my spicy pumpkin soup with pepitas, a swirl of sour cream, and dried cranberries. The soup is also good with crunchy, buttery croutons, toasted breadcrumbs, crumbled queso fresco, and fresh or fried sage leaves.
Give spicy Pumpkin Soup the French onion soup treatment: ladle pumpkin soup into oven-proof crocks and add a generous layer of grated cheddar or Monterey jack cheese to the top. Place the crocks under the broiler until the cheese is melted and browned.
In addition to adding your own unique toppings, you can customize Spicy Pumpkin Soup in several ways. Try adding chopped kale or spinach to the pot after the soup is puréed. You can also stir cubed, cooked pumpkin, diced, cooked potato, or diced apples to the puréed soup, to give it a little texture and extra flavor.
Oh my gosh, how cute would that be! Yes, pick up some of those small, sugar pie pumpkins and cut off the tops. Scoop out the guts and enogh of the flesh to have room for your soup. Test it: fill the cavity with water first, over the sink, just to make sure there are no cracks or holes. Then, ladle the hot Spicy Pumpkin Soup into the pumpkins and serve them immediately.
Another cute option, and one you can reuse every year, is to serve the soup in a large, pumpkin-shaped Dutch oven. Or, serve the soup in individual pumpkin-shaped soup bowls.
Tips:
- Chipotle peppers pack a lot of heat, so it doesn't take much to give this pumpkin soup a spicy kick. To make it less spicy, I remove the whole pepper after simmering. To make it hotter, you can purée some of the whole pepper into the Spicy Pumpkin Soup.
- Sour cream is a delicious topping for this soup, balancing the heat with its creamy, cool flavor. You can thin the sour cream with a little cream or milk; that way you'll be able to drizzle it into the pumpkin soup, or make decorative swirls on the surface.
- Leftover chipotle peppers and sauce can be transferred to a freezer-proof bag or container, and frozen for up to three months.
The recipe for Spicy Pumpkin Soup is below! Here are recipes that are perfect for chilly fall days:
💬 Did you make and devour this recipe? Leave a comment below.
📖 Recipe
Spicy Pumpkin Soup
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Ingredients
- 2½ tablespoons vegetable oil
- 1½ cups diced onion (such as yellow, white, or Vidalia onions)
- 3 cloves garlic, minced
- 5 cups chicken stock
- 2 cups water
- 29 ounces solid pumpkin purée
- 1 whole chipotle pepper (from a can of chipotle peppers)
- 1 tablespoon chipotle pepper sauce (from can of chipotle peppers)
- 2 teaspoons salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- optional toppings, like sour cream, pepitas, dried cranberries, croutons, toasted breadcrumbs, or grated cheese like cheddar or Monterey jack
Instructions
Sauté the aromatics:
- Heat the 2½ tablespoons vegetable oil in a stock pot or large soup pot over medium heat. Stir in the 1½ cups diced onion
- Sauté the onion, stirring often for about 5 minutes, until it's translucent and softened. Stir in 3 cloves garlic, minced; sauté and stir the vegetables for another minute.
Add the other ingredients:
- Add in 5 cups chicken stock, 2 cups water, 29 ounces solid pumpkin purée, 1 whole chipotle pepper, and 1 tablespoon chipotle pepper sauce Stir to combine the ingredients.
- Note: For a less spicy soup, you can use just half of a chipotle pepper, or omit it and use just the sauce instead.
- Increase the heat to high and bring the soup to a boil.
- Reduce the heat to medium-high. Simmer the soup for 10 minutes, stirring occasionally, until the soup is beginning to thicken.
- Remove the pot from the heat. Remove the pepper from the soup and discard.
Purée the soup:
- Purée the soup by pouring it into a mixer (in batches if necessary) and blending the soup until smooth. (Remove the cap from the lid of the blender and cover the opening with a kitchen towel, so that steam can escape and your hand is protected.)
- Another option is to use an immersion, or stick, blender to purée the soup right in the pot. Move the stick blender all around to completely process the soup.
- Note: For a spicier soup, you can purée in some or all of the chipotle pepper.
- Return the soup to the stock pot, and stir in the 2 teaspoons salt and ½ teaspoon black pepper. Taste the soup; add more salt and pepper if needed.
Garnish and serve:
- Ladle the Chipotle Pumpkin Soup into bowls or soup crocks. Top them with optional toppings, like sour cream, pepitas, dried cranberries, croutons, toasted breadcrumbs, or grated cheese like cheddar or Monterey jack
- Tip: Thin the sour cream with a little cream or milk and you'll be able to drizzle it into the soup, or make decorative swirls on the surface.
- Another idea perfect for fall is to ladle the soup into small, hollowed out, sugar pie pumpkins, then add the garnishes.
- Serve the soup while it's hot.
- Makes about 7 to 7½ cups of soup.
To store:
- Once the chipotle pumpkin soup is cool, cover the pot tightly or transfer the soup to covered food storage containers.
- Refrigerate chipotle pumpkin soup for up to one week.
To freeze the soup:
- Transfer the cooled Chipotle Pumpkin Soup to a freezer proof container or containers, leaving room at the top for expansion.
- Freeze the soup for up to three months. Allow it to thaw in the fridge before reheating.
Notes
- Chipotle peppers pack a lot of heat, so it doesn't take much to give this pumpkin soup a spicy kick. To make it less spicy, I remove the whole pepper after simmering. To make it hotter, you can purée some of the whole pepper into the soup.
- Sour cream is a delicious topping for this soup, balancing the heat with its creamy, cool flavor. You can thin the sour cream with a little cream or milk; that way you'll be able to drizzle it into the soup, or make decorative swirls on the surface.
Nutrition
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