Chipotle Pumpkin Soup

To roast the pumpkin:

Preheat the oven to 350 F. Cut the pumpkin in half and remove the seeds and “guts”. Place the pumpkin halves face down in a glass 13 x 9 pan. Fill the pan with water, 1/4 of the way up the pumpkin. Bake for an hour or until tender. Remove dish from oven and set on a rack. Flip the pumpkin halves over, put them on a plate and let them cool before scraping out the fresh, yummy pumpkin goodness. Turn off oven.

For the soup:

In a Dutch oven, warm olive oil on high heat then add the sliced onions. Cook 5 minutes and then add the garlic and jalapeño. Cook an additional 5 minutes or so. By then the onions should start to caramelize and turn translucent. Stir in the pumpkin flesh, salt, pepper and cumin. Mix together well.

Pour in the chicken broth and stir well until the pumpkin has mixed in to the broth. Bring to a simmer, and put heat at medium or medium-high. Add the sherry and adobo sauce. You can add some diced chipotle pepper if you want—the pepper is too spicy for me with the jalapeño. Feel free to omit one or the other but the sauce part of the chipotle pepper in adobo sauce is key.

Simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and add soup into a blender a little at a time (or use an immersion blender and blend in the pot) and puree until smooth. Be sure to work in batches if you use a standard blender! It’s hot and you don’t want it exploding out of the blender.. Been there done that.

Once the entire batch of soup is pureed, add it back to the Dutch oven and add the black beans. Simmer for another 5-7 minutes.

Serve with crusty bread, top with plain Greek yogurt and cilantro.
Enjoy!