Friday, October 15, 2010

Fall soup for a cold rainy night

Pumpkin, black bean and sausage soup
Today was a rainy, cold and miserable day...perfect night for a big bowl of hot soup! I had planned on making this soup all week, and apparently I picked the right night!

Where the soup came from. Last weekend I read a tip in a magazine (Cooking Light, I believe) that suggested putting pumpkin puree in oatmeal. I eat oatmeal every morning, and thought this would be great. The actual experience was not so great in fact, and I had the better part of a can of pumpkin puree leftover. So...I thought a pumpkin soup would be the perfect use-up. For some reason I thought pumpkin black bean soup sounded like a "thing" so I made a mental note to add black beans. When I mentioned the soup to my husband, he decided it needed sausage too...so there you have it!

Making the soup. The problem I always run in to when making something pumpkin (that isn't a baked good) is that I expect it to be sweet and am always confused when it isn't. When I was seasoning, I felt like it should have a hint of sweetness, so I added a touch of brown sugar. I had originally intended on including apple in the soup (and am just remembering this fact now), so I wonder if that would have done the trick.

You will see in my list of ingredients that I used heavy whipping cream. I would normally NOT do this. Generally, I would just use whole milk (which I have in the house for my not-yet-two-year-old) or fat free half and half. I had the heavy cream, so used it. Not much, but it probably made the soup slightly richer (which is, perhaps, not a bad thing). I had planned on adding fresh parsley at the end, but only had cilantro - so used that instead. I may have just liked the flavor of the cilantro in this better.

The results. Both Brett (my husband) and I thought the soup was great. The kids...eh. Typically, I don't give my kids soup. Talk about a "hot mess" (get it, because the soup is hot and kids are messy? moving on...) However, I'm trying to get better about making them try everything instead of just resorting to a safe kid-food haven. The results...Adela wouldn't try it and Bodie ate 3 bites. Not a complete loss, but not a huge winner either.

The recipe.
1 tblsp olive oil
1/2 pkg of sweet turkey sausage (three links)
2 tblsp onion, chopped
1tblsp flour
3 cups chicken stock (I use low-sodium)
1 cup pumpkin puree
1/2 tsp of cinnamon
pinch of fresh ground nutmeg
1/4 tsp dried sage
1 tblsp brown sugar
salt and pepper to taste
1 can of black beans rinsed and drained
3 tblsp heavy whipping cream (milk or half and half would be fine)
3 tblsp chopped cilantro or parsley

Heat the olive oil over medium high heat. Brown the sausage and halfway through, add the onion.


Cook until the sausage is all cooked through. Add the flour, stirring and cook for 2 minutes. Add the chicken stock and pumpkin, stirring thoroughly.


bump up the heat to med-high and bring to a boil. Add cinnamon, nutmeg, sage, brown sugar, salt and pepper. Drop the heat back to medium and add black beans and heavy whipping cream. Heat through 5-10 minutes or until ready to serve. Stir in cilantro or parsley right before serving. 3-4 servings.


To accompany the soup, I baked a beer bread mix. Tastefully simple Wheat is what we had and it was delicious! (Not exactly what i would call a "whole grain" but delightful nonetheless).

Mixing the dough

Fresh baked

To dress it up, I made a honey butter to go with it. Normally we don't eat "real" butter...we're more of a brummel and brown family. But, since this was my first food blog post I wanted to show off!

Mix 1/4 cup slightly softened butter with 1 tblsp honey. Mix with a spoon and serve with the warm bread!

Happy Friday!

3 comments:

  1. This is a perfect Halloween soup! I love it! :-)

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  2. Yum! My girls LOVE soup esp with sausage:). In fact, I made turkey soup for them tonight. I think they enjoy fishing the goodies out of the broth??

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  3. wow!! I'm sooo impressed. I just made soup last night tooo. we are so in tune. Love following your blog- look forward to seeing more yummy recipes.

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