Hi! My name is Carson. I’m a radio personality and an amateur Chef. I’m not formally trained but I’ve been cooking for about 40 years for my friends, for my family, for fellow foodies, and occasionally doing that cooking demos with actual real chefs. So, I pick up a lot of good things. The reason why I do it is because I wanted the mystified things that maybe you might be afraid to try and also bring couples together over a great meal.
Today, we are making curry pumpkin soup. All right, so with pumpkin soup, you can go out and buy a pumpkin. You can seed it, you can peel it, you can boil it, or roast it to get the pumpkin meat. It’s obviously a very seasonal product and since you don’t see any Halloween decorations on my house, I’m just going to go with a canned pumpkin all right. So, this is just your basic canned pumpkin. Please do not buy pumpkin pie filling or you’re going to get a really funky tasting soup and you're not going to like it.
So, what I’ve got here guys is about two nice cloves of finely chopped garlic. I’ve got one very nice size chopped up jalapeno pepper. I’ve got one large carrot, peeled and chopped. I’ve got two good size stalks of celery that I have chopped up. I have got one teaspoon of turmeric and doesn’t turmeric sound tasty? One and a half teaspoons of salt, use sea salt or kosher salt. Do not use iodized salt. That is for your driveway when it’s icy. I have two teaspoons of curry. I love the smell of curry, wonderful stuff! And for the finish, a little bit of parsley and also we’re going to add a dollop of sour cream. Also, we’re going to add about three cups of chicken broth as we’re cooking it.
What we’re going to do right now is I’ve got some extra virgin olive oil in the sauté pan. I have finely chopped about two to three cloves of garlic. So, I’m going to go ahead and throw those in there guys. Get that garlic soften up a little bit. I’ve also finally chopped a jalapeno pepper so I’m going to go ahead and add that. I’m going to get those going and then I’m going to put them in the food processor and puree them. I’ve got one carrot. So, I’m going to drop that in my food processor right now. I’ve got two stalks of celery. I’m going to drop these in food processor right now. And I’m going to tear them up. Then I’m going to add my carrots and celery. The carrots obviously will add kind of a sweet flavor. And the celery will add a celery flavor because celery just tastes like celery. I’m going to add about two cups of chicken broth right now. I’m going to let this boil for around 10 minutes until it gets soft and I’m going to puree it.
In this pot, we have chicken broth, we have jalapeno, and we have garlic, and also carrots and celery. I’ve had it cooking for about 10 minutes so it is softened up. I’m going to go ahead and add my turmeric. I’m going to add my sea salt. I’m going to add my curry. I’m going to add a pinch of cayenne then I’m going to put it in my food processor and puree it very nicely. Now obviously, since it’s been cooking about 10 minutes, some of the chicken broth is cooked off a bit. So, I’m going to add a little more chicken broth depending on the consistency that I want for the soup. I’m going to stir this up. You’re going to smell this in just a second. This smells nice. All right, let’s puree.
Okay, I pureed that for about 30 seconds. Here we go. There’s my puree of jalapeno, and carrots, and celery, and seasonings. All right, so I’ve got my pureed mixture of jalapeno, and celery, and garlic, and carrots, and chicken broth. One thing that I didn’t put in here was one medium onion with the sauté mixture. I’ve got some people in my life who don’t like an onion. I actually prefer it with an onion. So if you want, add an onion to the mixture as you’re sautéing it and then put it in the food processor.
All right, so I’ve got my mixture here of all my sautéed vegetables that I pureed very nicely and I’m ready for the pumpkin. Now, this is about one and three quarters pounds of pumpkin that’s a 29 ounce can. I’m going to add this slowly. I’ve got the heat on medium and I’m going to whisk it in. I can already tell I’m probably going to add it. I have to add a little more chicken broth because it’s really thick right now. So, I’m just going to go ahead and add some more. Don’t add too much. You don’t want to be really soupy. You wanted it to be fairly hardy. But obviously canned pumpkin is very thick. This is still a fairly course. It’s not hyper creamy. If you want to make it creamier, you could use a blender and puree it further before you present it.
Now, this soup is going to cook for about half an hour on your stove on a medium heat. I’m going to add a bay leaf. It’s been on a really light, mild boil for about a half an hour. I mean just a few bubbles. It’s on a fairly low heat. You don’t want to overcook this. You don’t want to cause it to stick to the bottom of the pan. But it should be about done and we are ready to serve it.
Now, here’s how you’re going to plate it. You’ll just take a little of your curry pumpkin soup. I’d suggest enough to cover the bottom of the bowl. You can put a little more in if you want. Like I said, this is a hearty soup and if you’re serving in courses, you don’t want to over do it. What I’m going to take here is a dollop of sour cream. Now, it’s optional but when it comes to sour cream, for me it’s never optional. And this is kind of strange but you’re going to like it. This is parsley. I’m just going to take a little bit of this parsley and sprinkle it over the top. Now, this is not for garnishing purposes. I mean it looks pretty and everything but honestly I could tell you. When you stir this into the soup, it adds a lot of flavor. It’s an odd mixture you think of the parsley, jalapeno but actually it’s really good. And as you can see, it looks really pretty.
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