Savory Pumpkin Bisque Recipe | ChefDeHome.com (2024)

FAQs

What do you eat pumpkin bisque with? ›

Bread and crackers are arguably the best side dish to serve with soup to soak up all that goodness. Pumpkin soup is the ideal soup to eat with bread because it's smooth and creamy. No little bits will fall off your cracker or slice, and the carbs will keep you satisfied long after you've cleaned your bowl.

Key Differences

Ingredients: Bisque is often made with seafood and enriched with heavy cream, whereas soup can be made with a wide range of ingredients, offering more versatility. Consistency: Bisque is consistently smooth and velvety, while soup can have a diverse range of consistencies, depending on the recipe.

Add flour or cornflour

Put a tablespoon of either into a small bowl and stir in 2-3 tbsp of the soup until you have a smooth mixture. Stir this back into the soup and bring it to a simmer. Cook for a few minutes to allow the starch granules to burst to thicken, and to cook out any flour flavour.

There is a savory aspect to it, and you can definitely taste the squashy pumpkin flavor, but it needs something to balance out its sweetness in my opinion. It's creamy, and there are plenty of secondary herb flavors to keep it interesting: garlic, tahini, and onion to name a few.

The main ingredient of a bisque is usually a shellfish like lobster, crab, shrimp, or crayfish, but occasionally other ingredients such as tomato, pumpkin or chicken are used.

A bisque is a thick cream soup that chefs purée and strain for a fine, smooth final result. Traditional bisque recipes feature seafood like lobster, crayfish, shrimp, or crab as the main ingredient—chefs typically grind the crustacean shells into a fine paste to thicken the mixture.

Most modern bisques are thickened using rice. Some cook the rice in the broth and strain it out later, using only the left-behind rice starch to thicken the soup. Others puree the rice into the soup to thicken it. Almost all bisques are finished with hot cream for a velvety texture.

Cream and sherry are the finishing ingredients for most bisque's.

Bisques are almost always thickened with roux (rü)—a mixture of equal weights of fat (typically butter) and flour cooked over low heat. Slow cooking, with continuous stirring, is important to blend and heighten the flavors and to expand the starch in the flour gradually.

If it tastes bland, add more salt. The salt definitely brings out all the flavors from that long list of spices. Stir in maple syrup.

What pairs well with pumpkin soup? ›

Pumpkin soup is really creamy, regardless of whether you use an immersion blender or a regular blender. So, bread, especially crusty bread, is a great way to sop up thicker soup straight from a large pot. I love pairing pumpkin soup with focaccia or will toast a nice French baguette or sourdough.

The Sugar Pie Pumpkin is often considered the crème de la crème of cooking pumpkins. Its deep orange flesh is sweet, smooth, and creamy, making it perfect for pies, soups, and purees. This culinary gem pairs beautifully with warm spices like cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves, creating irresistible autumnal flavors.

Bisque, on the other hand, is characterized by its creamy and luxurious texture. While it will also incorporate a seafood broth or stock for depth of flavor, bisque is defined by the addition of heavy cream and, sometimes, a thickening agent, which imparts a rich, velvety consistency.

Stews get their flavor from the liquids they're cooked in (think beef burgundy) and when finished, there's usually less liquid than in a soup and larger pieces of meat and vegetables. Bisques are typically shellfish cooked in a flavored liquid then puréed.

The bisque should be thick enough to just coat the back of a spoon but not so thick that it is clearly thickened with a slurry mixture and develops a weird gelatinous consistency. Instead of using a slurry or roux base I cook rice in the broth and blend it. It should be a silky and luxurious soup – not chunky.

Serve the seafood bisque with freshly baked biscuits or crusty bread. If it's a lunch or main course soup, add your favorite salad.

To complement pumpkin with sweet flavor pairings, consider using spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and vanilla, or sweet ingredients like chocolate, maple, honey, cranberries or brown sugar. Create savory dishes by pairing pumpkin with spices like chilies, cajun, cayenne or pepper.

Bisque is a smooth, creamy, highly seasoned soup of French origin, classically based on a strained broth (coulis) of crustaceans. It can be made from lobster, langoustine, crab, shrimp, or crayfish. The French bisque is one of the most popular seafood soups around the world.