Creamy pumpkin soup, gifted to me by a dear friend, is one of my favorite fall recipes. And when I say gifted, let me tell you, this recipe is a gem!
It’s one I wouldn’t have tried except my friend gave it to me, and I figured if she liked it so much I would too. And I did! So I make it yearly! (sometimes twice a year!).
This is a partnered post with Hood and I received compensation for sharing. All opinions are my own.
Last week, I had the chance to attend a Hood Meal Makeover cooking class featuring Hood Sour Cream. I joined a group of food-loving bloggers at AMG Catering in Wilton, Connecticut to learn how to incorporate sour cream into main dishes.
Chef Alison Grace and AMG Event Coordinator Olivia Savarese, guided us through three recipes: Pork Chops with Sage & Sour Cream Sauce, Portobello mushroom & Kale Stroganoff (vegetarian!), and Tarragon Mustard Chicken with Sour Cream. Let me tell you – all the dishes were delightful, and had that tangy sour cream flavor! (I love sour cream!).
Beyond making us dish after dish of deliciousness, our two personal chefs also taught us some kitchen tricks for easier dinners, like:
- Buy peeled garlic in bulk to avoid the mess of peeling garlic skin. If you’re worried about it going bad before you can use it, roast it in oil to preserve it for a few more weeks.
- Create a “S’Peppa” salt and pepper mix to keep by the stove for easy seasoning (3:1 ration of salt to pepper!).
- Make your own oil blend for burn-free sauteeing: Coconut + Olive in a 90/10 percent ratio works well. Or other high-smoke point oil with just ten percent olive oil. You don’t want to use olive oil for cooking as it burns too quickly – save that green-gold goodness for finishing a dish!
Creamy Pumpkin Soup Using Hood Sour Cream
Several ideas came to mind, but then I remembered I was making my delicious pumpkin soup this weekend. Typically, I thicken the soup with light cream, but I decided why not use sour cream instead? In fact, this was a great idea because although the fat content between sour cream and light cream remained relatively the same, I was able to add six grams of protein to the soup using sour cream!
Also, by switching to sour cream, the soup had an added tangy flavor that made it better tasting than ever! The citrus peel and ginger already give it some bright notes of flavor, but I think it’s the sour cream that added that final flourish!
If you have some little sugar pumpkins in the house right now (and I bet you do!), grab them and make this yummy soup!
Creamy Pumpkin Soup with sour cream Recipe
Ingredients
- 2 lb sugar pumpkin
- 3 T butter
- 1 onion, chopped
- 1 garlic clove, crushed
- 3 1/2 cups water
- 2 large vegetable bouillon cubes (you may need three depending on the brand)
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1 T lemon juice
- 3 pared orange zest strips
- 1 bay leaf
- 1/4 cup milk
- 3/4 cup sour cream
- salt and pepper to taste
- green onions (optional)
Instructions
- Peel and seed pumpkin and cut into 1" cubes.
- Melt butter in large pot, add onion and garlic and cook over med-low heat until transparent.
- Add pumpkin cubes and toss with onion, cook 2-3 minutes.
- Add water and bouillon cubes, bring to a boil.
- Immediately add salt, pepper, ginger, bay leaf, lemon juice, orange zest, then reduce heat to simmer.
- Gently simmer over low heat, mostly covered for 20 minutes. Stir occasionally.
- Remove from heat
- Discard zest and bay leaf.
- Cool soup slightly.
- Process with handheld food processor (keeping blade at the bottom of pan to avoid hot splatters)
- Remove 1/2 cup soup, and blend with milk and sour cream. Gently add back to the rest of soup, stirring constantly so cream does not curdle.
- Reheat gently before serving.
- Garnish with snipped green onions and a dollop of sour cream!
Notes
I marked prep time as 1 hour, because you'll probably need 30 minutes to clean pumpkin and chop onions, etc. Then you'll likely need an additional 30 minutes to let soup cool, add sour cream, etc. So there is some prep at the beginning and end of this recipe.
And that’s my Hood Meal Makeover with Sour Cream! It was delicious! Will you be trying it out?
What’s your favorite dinnertime recipe that you could makeover with sour cream?
Find more Hood Meal Makeover Ideas!
This is a partnered post with Hood and I received compensation for sharing. All opinions are my own.
Seven Fun Facts About Pumpkins! - Maggie Bags
Thursday 23rd of October 2014
[…] pumpkin-spice-anything this time of year! I love cooking fresh pumpkin, especially in a delicious creamy pumpkin soup – so perfect for chilly […]
Seven Fun Facts About Pumpkins! - Maggie Bags
Thursday 23rd of October 2014
[…] pumpkin-spice-anything this time of year! I love cooking fresh pumpkin, especially in a delicious creamy pumpkin soup – so perfect for chilly […]
Michelle @ A Dish of Daily Life
Thursday 9th of October 2014
Looks delicious! I use sour cream in soup all the time!! Pinning! It was great to meet you the other day!
Michelle @ A Dish of Daily Life
Thursday 9th of October 2014
Looks delicious! I use sour cream in soup all the time!! Pinning! It was great to meet you the other day!
Sour Cream and Onion Tater Tot Casserole #HoodMealMakeover #SourCream
Tuesday 7th of October 2014
[…] Chef Alison Milwe Grace, owner of AMG Catering in Wilton, CT, and Olivia Savarese, her Event Coordinator, hosted a group of Connecticut (and one Rhode Island) bloggers last week to learn about using Hood Sour Cream as an ingredient in main dishes, not just as a condiment. The ladies guided us through three recipes: Pork Chops with Sage & Sour Cream Sauce, Portobello mushroom & Kale Stroganoff,and Tarragon Mustard Chicken with Sour Cream. (Thank you to Julie from Happy Strong Home for the pics from the event, I had a fully charged battery in my camera and no memory card! Be sure to check out her Creamy Pumpkin Soup Recipe!) […]