Pumpkin Shrimp Soup

Monday I needed pumpkin for a recipe and had to open a 30 ounce can which was twice what I needed.  For two days there was the other half of the can staring at me.  I was thinking I would make some kind of pumpkin muffins, but didn't have any baking soda in my kitchen.  So I gave a few cookbooks to my roommate to look through and she found a recipe for a Spiced Pumpkin Shrimp Soup.  It sounded interesting so I thought I would give it a try.

Here is the recipe and what I did:

2 medium onions
1 cup chopped carrots, sliced
2 cloves garlic, I love garlic so I always add more 
2 t fresh ginger

2 T butter

This all cooked in a 3 quart pot on the stove for about 20 minutes so the onions would be fully sweated.  I only think onions are good in a soup once they are all sweated out.  I don't really know if this is a technical term or not...
 
1 T fresh cilantro was suppose to be added to the soup but didn't.  I went to the store and thought I had grabbed cilantro, but it turns out I grabbed parsley.  So I didn't add that to the soup.



1/2 t all spice
1 14 oz can chicken broth.  I don't keep chicken broth stocked in my kitchen so I used a chicken base.

This was added to the pot on the stove and then blended in the immersion blender until all smooth. 

14 oz can of pumpkin
1 cup milk 

This was then added to the pot on the stove and heated through.

 That is what my pot looked like.


8 oz of cooked shrimp.

I only had raw deveined frozen shrimp on hand so I thawed it out.  Once it was thawed I looked closely at it and noticed that only one of the veins on the shrimp had been removed.  A few months ago I had the pleasure of having shrimp that was not deveined and it was so nasty.  I now understood why judges on cooking shows get so upset when people do devein shrimp.  I deveined shrimp for the first time.  It was not to bad, but a little time consuming.

I cooked the shrimp and added it to my warm soup.

Serve with plain yogurt and some chopped chives.

This is my bowl of soup.  It hard to see but there is a piece of shrimp and some yogurt in the bowl.  

I will have to get better at taking final photos.

This made so much soup.  The recipe said it would be for 4 servings, but I would have said 6 to 8.  We eat all the shrimp out and froze over half of the soup.  Next time I want this soup, I can pull it out the freezer and cook up some more shrimp and have dinner read to go.

If you try it let me know what you think.