Pumpkin Bisque

It’s my favorite time of year – Autumn. Apples come into season in lots of tasty varieties, the weather cools off (which makes cycling easier), and the most awesome of holidays is nearly here – Halloween.

Pumpkins are now stocked in grocery stores, and last year I got a random hair up my butt to make pumpkin bisque. I made it from a recipe I found online, and it was pretty tasty. This week, I invited Kyle and Liz over for dinner. Kyle was one of my Burning Man campmates this year, and his fiancee, Liz, took care of our kitties while we were getting dirty on the Playa. I owed her BIG TIME. So I took up the ambitious project of making pumpkin bisque, bacon cheese and green onion scones, and a whole slow-roasted chicken with veggies. I had to shower when it was all nearly done, and holy crap it was worth it.

I decided to post my recipe for pumpkin bisque since all the recipes I’ve found online were pretty lame, or even more work intensive than my method. Plus, I figured photographing the process would be fun.

First, you get yourself a pumpkin – mediumish in size. The original recipe recommends five pounds. It doesn’t have to be pretty, although most grocery stores try to trot out their prettiest pumpkins since they’re mainly sold to be carved and grace doorsteps for the month.

What a purty pumpkin!

If it makes everyone feel any better, the backside of this was a bit flattened, dirty-looking, and had a bit of guano stuck to it that I had to slice off. Two people complimented my pumpkin at the store. I felt bad telling them it’d be turned into soup. One woman looked like I had grown another head when I told her I’d be making pumpkin bisque. “Is it stringy? How do you keep it from getting stringy?” I told her that you have to purée the fuck out of that, but we’re getting ahead of ourselves.

Before starting anything, I turned the oven to 375 degrees F, for roasting the pumpkin. I like to preheat the fuck out of my oven. Since I started doing that, food has cooked a lot better, more evenly. The longer it’s pre-heated, the better.

I like to assemble a bit of a work area at my kitchen table for the taking apart the pumpkin part. It’s a bit of a messy job, and I like being able to just sweep away the mess. I took apart two Trader Joe’s paper bags and laid them down with the stuff I’d need on top.

And then comes the part that I loathe – actually cutting into the bitch. I started cutting it the standard way – by cutting around the stem. But then I realized I wasn’t carving a jack-o-lantern, and I was just making more work for myself. So I cut it in half.

Greasy grimy pumpkin guts!It still was a lot of grinding work to cut up. If any of you have a way of cutting up a pumpkin that is easier than just using a knife and putting your back into it, let me know in the comments, please!

Just cutting it in half did make scraping out the insides much easier, however. I used a big metal serving spoon to scrape the inside, and used a larger plastic serving spoon to gather the guts into a bowl, for making roasted pumpkin seeds later.

Cleaned pumpkin halvesI then hacked up the halves into five or six pieces each. I brushed the pieces with a bit of olive oil (lightly coated) and then lightly sprinkled them with crushed sea salt and cracked pepper.

Pumpkin prepared for roastingI then roasted the pumpkin for 25 minutes. I have to note here that in the original recipe I borrowed, it instructed to peel and cut up the pumpkin into small pieces before this step. You can do that, but at this point, you’ve probably realized how much back-stabbing work goes into cutting up raw pumpkin. My method means you have less cutting to do when the pumpkin is raw. Once it’s roasted a bit, cutting it off the rind and into smaller pieces is a LOT easier.

After 25 minutes, take out the pieces and allow them to cool down so that it’s easier to cut up. Once they’re cool, cut up the pumpkin into smaller pieces, slice the meat off the rind, and put the pieces in a big crock pot. I had gotten too large of a pumpkin, so once the pumpkin bits reached about four inches from the top, I stopped and put the remaining pieces in a ziplock for use later.

I then filled the pot with water until it just covered the pumpkin. I returned the pot to the stove, cranked the burner to high, and threw in about two tablespoons of chicken bouillon (I use Better than Bouillon, but use whatever floats your boat, including vegetable base if you’re vegetarian). I added half a chopped yellow onion, about half a cup of white wine, and herbs – a sprinkle of cumin, about one tablespoon each of cinnamon, allspice, sage, and thyme. I also added a bit of crushed sea salt (just a bit – bouillon already adds so much salt), and some cracked pepper.

Starting to cook!Once the soup starts to boil, a bit of foam scum will start to hang out on the top. When that happens, get a small sieve and skim it off. Then turn down the heat until it’s simmering. Let it simmer until the pumpkin is very soft. It might take only half an hour, but I let it simmer at least an hour to get the flavors really going nicely together.

When the pumpkin is very soft (test this with a spoon – if it sinks without any resistance into the pumpkin, then it’s ready), you’ll want to purée the soup in small batches with either a blender or food processor. You can let the soup cool before you do the purée bit to save yourself some discomfort, but probably at this point the smell of the soup is driving you nuts and you’ve been at it for awhile and godDAMN let’s just get this done already, ok? Anyway, purée in small batches. As in, fill whatever container that is doing the deed only halfway, or you’re going to have an even bigger mess on your hands than normal. This step is already naturally messy. Don’t worry about it, just get through it and clean up later.

It’s going to be tempting to just shove your face into the resulting soup. Resist that urge.

Purée'd soupIt’ll taste pretty good at this point on it’s own. You could probably eat it just as-is. But just a little bit more work – much easier work compared to what you’ve done so far – and you’re done. So hang in there, slugger.

To me, bisque should be a bit spicy. It should make my mouth warm, and the warmth should hang around. So at this point I add some hot sauce. My favorite is Cholula, but whatever you have in the fridge should work just fine. Just keep adding it and tasting the soup until it’s at the heat you like.

You can either simmer the soup until you’re ready to serve it, or if you are ready to serve, just add some heavy cream. About half a cup or so. I don’t measure it. I just stir in cream until the soup looks right.

I then serve in bowls with an Italian parsley garnish. I didn’t take a picture of the result. I was too busy shoving it in my mouth.

I did, however, serve it with bacon, gruyere cheese, and green onion scones. I took a picture of those.

These are like filling your mouth with sweet, sweet orgasmHere’s the link to the recipe that was the inspiration for the bisque. If you want to try out the scones, here’s the link to that recipe. You’ll need to follow the scone recipe precisely. Baking n’ all that.

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