While not directly taken from global cuisines, this recipe for unique pumpkin soup with gnocchi is heavily inspired by northern Italian cuisine! Created with bacon, soft cheese, and pumpkin, this final product is impressive for how easy it is to produce! this hearty yet creamy soup is the perfect choice for a cozy fall evening in with the family. Let’s dive in!
Why you will love this recipe!
This recipe makes use of simple cooking techniques like caramelizing onions, pureeing the stock, and making a bechamel sauce. It sounds difficult, but is in fact very easy, once you know what to look for. Plus, once you’ve mastered these techniques, you can apply them to any other dish you like!
This unique pumpkin soup with gnocchi uses simple ingredients – an onion, garlic, butter, bacon, heavy cream, pumpkin, soft cheese, and of course, gnocchi. All of these ingredients are typically available at your nearest supermarket, and are not very expensive! For under $20, you can have an impressive soup to serve for 4!
Step 1: Gather your ingredients
A few things are necessary to get started: bacon, onions, garlic, salt, pepper, cumin, and vegetable broth or broth base. To make the bechamel, butter, flour, heavy cream, and soft cheese (here, Boursin is used). Easy enough! Most of those things are pantry staples anyway! Even better, there’s nothing expensive here! You can make this soup for under $20!
Step 2: Cook your bacon
Typically, when purchasing bacon, I like to purchase bacon with less fat. However, for this recipe, the opposite is true. The initial goal for our bacon is to leave some bacon grease behind in the pan to flavor our onions, so fatty bacon is preferred! I fry the bacon in the pot in which I will make the soup to save a bit of time on cleanup later. Also, cooking the bacon on a lower heat will help the bacon crisp up more effectively, so that it is easier to crumble on top of our soup in the plating stage! Don’t worry about how your pan looks. All that leftover fat and the blackening on the bottom of the pot will be key flavor powerhouses in our next steps!
Step 3: Caramelize your onions
Fry your onions in your leftover bacon fat. If using a leaner bacon, go ahead and add some olive oil to make sure your onions don’t burn! I prefer my onions to be julienne cut for caramelizing. The smaller the pieces of onion, the easier it is to burn them! However, the flip side of that coin is that, the smaller the pieces of onion, the faster it is to caramelize them! For this recipe, I used small diced onions to speed the process along somewhat.
Caramelizing onions is a necessary tool to have in your culinary toolbox! There’s a lot of talk around how difficult it is to caramelize onions just right, but that’s all it is – talk. The reality of the situation is, caramelizing onions is simple! You just fry your onions on a lower temperature (to prevent burning) for a little longer than you normally would!
What you need to look out for is this: do your onions look like they’ve given up? At first, onions become translucent when sauteed. Then, they start to darken, which is the first stage of caramelization. You’re not quite there yet, though. When your onions have lost their structure and start to be very soft, then they are ready. They’ll have reduced in size by at least half! Now, all the sugars in the onion are ready to provide flavor to the rest of the soup!
Add your garlic in, and cook for another 30-60 seconds. You don’t want it to burn, either, but it should be fragrant!
Step 4: Add in your spices and broth
Generally, I use liquid chicken broth, but today, I’m using chicken broth base. As I already had some on hand, it saved me some time! Add your powdered spices and/or broth base into the pan, and toast it for about 15-30 seconds. You want to smell the nutmeg and herbs!
Then, quickly add in half your broth (or water if using broth base). Use this to deglaze your pan. By this, I mean that the liquid should have released the blackened bits on the bottom of the pan. Use your preferred cooking utensil to gently scrape the bottom of the pan and release as much as will come up. Then, add the rest of your liquid. Add the pumpkin, stirring continuously until well combined. You can use canned pumpkin, or for a fuller flavor, our Homemade Pumpkin Puree!
Step 5: Puree the soup base
Now, we puree the soup. Getting hot soup from your soup pot into a blender or food processor is a bit of an art. I personally use a ladle to get the majority of the soup into the blender, then pour the remnants in directly from the pot to the blender. This way minimizes mess and saves time! Depending on the amount of soup you’re making and/or the size of your blender, you may have to work in steps. Otherwise, the pressure from the steam and the soup may pop the top of your blender off, which is less than ideal.
While I love a good blended soup, you may not, and that’s okay! If you prefer a chunkier soup, just skip this step! Either way, allow the soup to gently bubble over a low heat while you whip up a bechamel.
Step 6: Start the bechamel
In a separate, smaller pot, begin making the bechamel. This first step is also known as making a roux. The type of roux you’ve made depends on the length of time you toast your flour. Since we are making a cheese bechamel, we will make a blond roux, which is a medium cooking length. This step is key to this unique pumpkin soup with gnocchi. Start by melting the butter in the bottom of the pot, and then adding the flour. Toast your flour. The flour/butter mixture will become bubbly, then foamy, then go back to a looser bubbliness. It will also smell nutty when it is ready, and look like this:
Step 7: Add your heavy cream and soft cheese
There is an amazing place in Louisville called Ramsi’s Cafe on the World. If you ever get a chance to visit, do so! The service, ambiance, and food are all excellent. If you can, get a seat on the patio by the fountain and statues, and underneath the grape vines. It feels like you’ve stepped out of the city, despite being right in the heart of Bardstown Road.
It was here that I was introduced to Boursin cheese. They had served it over blackened chicken, and I was immediately in love! Their menu rotates seasonally, and everything I’ve ever tried there is divine. When I was planning to make a bechamel for this soup, I knew I had to include Boursin. While the cheese has a bit of tang and herbiness, the flavor is overall very mild – ideal for allowing our star ingredient (pumpkin) to shine!
But I digress. First, add the heavy cream and allow to cook until it has thickened significantly. It should look like this when a spatula is drawn across the bottom of the pot:
Add in your soft cheese whole, and mix continuously. You do not want your bechamel to burn! It will be very lumpy at first, but as the cheese melts, it will gradually become smooth and waxy.
Step 8: Stir the bechamel into the soup base
This step requires some patience! Stir the bechamel in slowly, making sure to evenly mix all parts of the soup. Scrape the bottom and sides of the pot to get all of that tasty soup broth and bechamel incorporated. You’ve finished the unique pumpkin soup! There’s just one more step, and you can serve!
Step 9: Cook your gnocchi
Gnocchi is very quick to cook! In only a few minutes, you’ve got a yummy potato-based pasta on your hands! However, it is best served immediately. Cook your gnocchi and quickly top with your pumpkin soup. Crumble your bacon over top, et voila – you have your unique pumpkin soup with gnocchi! In our kitchen, we love to serve the soup with our brown butter and sage focaccia – recipe coming soon! Sign up for our emails so you don’t miss this recipe or any of our upcoming tasty treats!
This were quite a few steps involved here! Questions? Drop them in the comments!
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Unique Pumpkin Soup with Gnocchi
Equipment
- 1 Soup pot
- 1 Medium pot
- 1 Blender or food processor
Ingredients
- 4 strips bacon
- olive oil if necessary
- 1 yellow onion julienne cut
- 3 cloves garlic minced
- 1 tsp nutmeg
- 1 tsp pepper
- salt to taste
- 2 tbsp chicken broth base or 2 cups chicken broth
- 15 oz pumpkin homemade or store-bought
- 2 tbsp butter
- 2 tbsp flour
- 1 cup heavy cream
- 1 package Boursin cheese garlic and herb
- 1 lb gnocchi homemade or store-bought
Instructions
- Fry bacon until crispy in the soup pot. Reserve remaining fat in the pot. Set bacon aside to drain residual bacon fat.4 strips bacon
- Caramelize onions in the bacon fat, adding olive oil if necessary to prevent onions from burning. In the last minute, add garlic and toast until fragrant. Stir in spices and toast for a few seconds until fragrant, as well.olive oil, 1 yellow onion, 3 cloves garlic, 1 tsp nutmeg, 1 tsp pepper, salt
- Use half of your liquid (water, if using chicken broth base, or chicken broth if not) to deglaze the pan. Scrape up any flavor-enhancing browned bits. Add the remaining liquid and pumpkin, and stir well.2 tbsp chicken broth base, 15 oz pumpkin
- Blend your soup base until it is a smooth puree. Return the puree to the soup pot and allow to simmer gently while making the bechamel.
- In the smaller pot, melt the butter. Add flour and stir continuously. The roux will bubble, foam, and then come back to bubbling. When it is a gentle tan color and has a nutty smell, it is done.2 tbsp butter, 2 tbsp flour
- Add the heavy cream and cook until the bechamel has become thick. You're going for the consistency of gravy.1 cup heavy cream
- Add the Boursin cheese, stirring continuously until smooth and waxy. You now have a bechamel sauce.1 package Boursin cheese
- Add the bechamel to the pumpkin soup base. Stir thoroughly to ensure all parts of the soup have been fully incorporated.
- Cook your gnocchi according to instructions. Immediately upon removal from boiling water, add the pumpkin soup. Crumble bacon over top to serve!1 lb gnocchi, 4 strips bacon
