Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup is one of our favourite healthy soups to enjoy during the Fall harvest season.
Our healthy homemade Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup recipe is quick and easy to make, ready to serve in under an hour.
Spoon through a bowl of our Roasted Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup featuring flavourful ginger, apple, honey, maple syrup, cinnamon, mace, nutmeg and parsley.
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What Is Soup?
Soup is a liquid food, generally served warm or hot (but can also be served cold like gazpacho), that is prepared by combining meat or vegetables with stock or water.
Hot soups are additionally characterized by boiling solid ingredients in liquids in a pot until the flavours are extracted, creating a rich broth.
Soups are similar to stews, and in some cases there may not be a clear distinction between the two. Soups generally have more liquid (broth) than chunkier and heartier stews.
In traditional French cuisine, soups are classified into two groups: clear soups (bouillon and consomme) and thick soups (purees, bisques, veloutes).
Purées are vegetable soups thickened with starch; bisques are made from puréed shellfish or vegetables thickened with cream; cream soups may be thickened with béchamel sauce; and veloutés are thickened with eggs, butter, and cream.
History of Soup
Evidence of the existence of soup can be found as far back as about 20,000 BC. Boiling was not a common cooking technique until the invention of waterproof containers, such as clay pots. To boil the water hot rocks were used.
The word soup comes from French soupe (broth), which comes through Vulgar Latin suppa (“bread soaked in broth”) from a Germanic source, from which also comes the word “sop”, a piece of bread used to soak up soup or a thick stew.
The word restaurant (meaning “restoring”) was first used in France in the 16th century, to refer to a highly concentrated, inexpensive soup, sold by street vendors, that was advertised as a cure to physical exhaustion. In 1765, a Parisian entrepreneur opened a shop specializing in such soups. This prompted the use of the modern word restaurant for eating establishments.
In America, the first colonial cookbook was published by William Parks in Williamsburg, Virginia, in 1742, based on Eliza Smith’s The Compleat Housewife; or Accomplished Gentlewoman’s Companion, and it included several recipes for soups and bisques.
English cooking dominated early colonial cooking; but as new immigrants arrived from other countries, other national soups gained popularity. In particular, German immigrants living in Pennsylvania were famous for their potato soups. In 1794, Jean Baptiste Gilbert Payplat dis Julien, a refugee from the French Revolution, opened an eating establishment in Massachusetts called The Restorator, and became known as the “Prince of Soups”.
My Family Loves Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup
My family has a tradition of eating soup and salad for lunch on Sunday’s after getting home from church. Soup is such an simple and brainless meal to serve a busy family with kids.
My dad would often make cream of tomato soup and serve a bowl with grilled cheese sandwiches and pickles. Our family also loved slurping through bowls of Butternut Squash Soup, French Onion Soup and Chicken Noodle Soup.
Some of the fondest memories of my childhood spent in Toronto, Markham, Oakville and Muskoka are cozying up to a bowl of homemade soup with gourmet crackers, artisanal cheese and sourdough bread.
During October in Ontario we’d often visit popular Fall Fairs in Norfolk County, Niagara and Prince Edward County to go on fun rides, run through corn mazes and purchase fresh local fruits and vegetables at the peak of harvest season.
Pumpkin and sweet potatoes are available in abundance year round in Canada but we especially love to serve this savoury soup in the Fall at Thanksgiving.
Where To Eat Soup
If you live in a large city in North America you’ll likely have access to plenty of soup-specific restaurants. We also love to visit local, family-run diners and cafes that offer menus specializing in “soups, sandwiches and salads.”
In Toronto, popular restaurants that serve soup include RaviSoups, Soup Nutsy, United Bakers Dairy, Cafe Polonez, Saffron Spice Kitchen, Santouka Ramen, Sansotei Ramen, Kenzo Ramen, Kinton Ramen, Ajisen Ramen, Maison Selby, Pho Vistro, Pho Hung, The Golden Turtle, Maha’s, Pai, Sabai Sabai, Khao San Road, One Love Vegetarian and Fabarnak.
Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup Health Benefits
Our Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup recipe is packed full of healthy ingredients!
Onions are a humble vegetable packed with vitamins, minerals and phytochemicals. Regular consumption of leeks can help boost digestive health and reduce the risk of developing heart disease.
Ginger contains at least 14 phytochemicals, many of which have impressive antioxidant and anti-inflamatory properties. It is a good source of copper, which supports your bones, blood and nervous system
A useful source of vitamins C, K and B6, apples support your immune, skeletal, and circulatory systems. Phytochemicals in apples may also keep your eyes healthy and help reduce bad cholesterol.
All varieties of pumpkin (or squash) are nutritious, but butternut squash is a superfood because it contains high levels of carotenoids, which help combat cancer and support skin health.
An excellent source of vitamins A and C, sweet potatoes boost your immune system and help keep your skin healthy. They also have a very low glycemic index, providing a steady supply of energy to your body.
Rich in energy-boosting manganese, cinnamon is also antibacterial and may protect your brain against Alzheimer’s disease.
An excellent source of vitamin K, as well as vitamin C, folate, and iron, parsley helps keep your bones and blood healthy, and protects your skin from damage by free radicals.
Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup Tips
This healthy homemade soup is quick and easy to make at home. We’ve included a few tips for first time soup makers!
- Use a large cast iron dutch oven with a high rim to reduce splatter when cooking and pureeing the vegetables.
- In our recipe below we suggest using an immersion blender to puree the cooked vegetables but you could also use a heavy duty Vitamix.
- We suggest using a high quality rubber spatula spoon when making soup so you can easily stir, scrape down the side of the pot and sip to check if it needs to be seasoned further with more salt before spooning into bowls.
- We’ve used ginger, maple syrup, cinnamon and parsley to flavour this soup. You could also substitute with garlic, curry powder and spicy chili.
- If you use vegetable stock instead of chicken stock this soup recipe is suitable for vegetarians.
- Our Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup recipe features butter and milk but you can make it vegan by substituting for coconut oil and coconut cream. If you’re going with flavours from Thailand why not add a few dashes of fish sauce and a scoop of curry paste?
What To Serve with Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup
There’s nothing more comforting on a cold day then cozying up to a bowl of soup with a fresh salad, gourmet crackers, artisanal cheeses, sourdough bread, savoury muffins and homemade pickles.
If you’re hosting a large dinner party you might want to serve our healthy Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup as an appetizer before serving heartier mains. We love serving this soup with Osaka Okonomayaki, Calgary Ginger Beef, Keto Jalapeno Poppers, Instant Pot Short Rib Ragu, Cheesy Polenta, Vegetarian Roti Canai Curry, Gruyere Grilled Cheese Sandwich, Old School Cheese and Onion Pie, Green Onion Cake, Baked Mediterranean Chicken Thighs, Baked Chicken Cracklings, Homemade Savoury Pickle Pie, Indian Crepes, Vietnamese Crepe Bánh Xèo, Tartiflette Reblochon or Ricotta Gnocchi.
After dinner why not dazzle your guests with one of our popular desserts such as Oat Flour Cookies with Chocolate Chips, Dark Chocolate Lindt Lindor Cookies, Maraschino Cherry Cupcakes Recipe or Cinnamon Babka For Chocolate Lovers.
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Storing Soup
If you have leftover Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup you can store it in the fridge in an airtight container for up to a week. To reheat simply zap it in the microwave or simmer in a small saucepan on the stove.
We love doubling our soup recipes so can store leftovers in the freezer and save time on cooking in the kitchen. We suggest storing leftover soup in Pyrex freezer safe containers that have a snug lid so there’s not spilling. My mother often uses old glass pasta sauce jars to store soup in the freezer.
Be sure to let your soup reach room temperature before storing it in the freezer. If you add a hot jar of soup to a cold freezer it will significantly reduce the interior temperature and potentially spoil your food.
How To Make Healthy Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup
Roasted Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup
Equipment
- oven
- baking sheet
- Immersion Blender
- Dutch Oven or Large Pot
- measuring cups
- measuring spoons
- Wooden spoon or spatula
- French knife
Ingredients
- 2 tbsp Unsalted butter
- 1 cup Spanish onions chopped
- 1 lb Pumpkin
- 1 lb Sweet Potato
- 2 cups Chicken broth
- 2 cups Milk
- 1/2 tsp Salt
- 1/2 tsp Black Pepper
- 1 tsp Ginger grated
- 1 Apple chopped
- 1 tbsp Honey
- 1 tbsp Maple syrup
- 1/4 tsp Ground cinnamon
- 1/8 tsp Ground mace
- 1/8 tsp Ground nutmeg
- 3 tbsp Sour Cream
- 2 tbsp Parsley chopped
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 400F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
- Slice pumpkin in half and remove seeds. Stab fork into each side of the pumpkin's skin 3-4 times. These holes allow steam to escape when roasting in the oven.
- Slather sweet potatoes and pumpkin halves in vegetable oil. Place pumpkin flesh sided own on the parchment paper.
- Roast pumpkin and sweet potato for 45-50 minutes. You'll known when they are finished baking when you insert a pairing knife into the vegetable flesh and it easily slides in and out.
- Let roast pumpkin and sweet potatoes cool. Once at room temperature scoop the pumpkin away from the skin into a measuring cup. Slice roasted sweet potatoes in half and similarly scoop out the flesh to be measured.
- Melt butter over medium heat in a large dutch oven. Add the onions and cook, stirring occasionally, until soft, approximately 5 minutes.
- Add roasted sweet potato and pumpkin to the onions and stir in chicken broth, salt and pepper. Simmer for 3-5 minutes while stirring.
- Add sliced apple, honey, ginger, maple syrup and spices.
- Using an immersion blender, puree the soup until thick and creamy.
- Slowly stir in room temperature milk then simmer while stirring for 2-3 minutes until desired consistency is reached.
- Use a ladle to pour Roasted Pumpkin and Sweet Potato Soup into bowls. Top with a dollop of sour cream and chopped parsley.
Nutrition
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