Pumpkin soup with Greek yoghurt: a creamy recipe for four

A creamy pumpkin soup with no double cream: Greek yoghurt stirred in off the heat gives body and around 14 g of protein per serving. Ready in 45 minutes.

Pumpkin is cheap and keeps for weeks, yet most pumpkin soups end up carrying a tub of double cream and barely 5 g of protein a bowl. Greek yoghurt does the same job — thickness plus a bit of tang — and brings protein with it. The one rule is that it never goes into boiling liquid, or it splits into grainy curds.

Prep time and servings

Prep: 15 minutes. Cooking: 30 minutes. Total: 45 minutes. The recipe makes 4 servings of roughly 400 ml each.

The soup keeps for 3 days in the fridge and freezes well, but only if you leave the yoghurt out and stir it in at the bowl. That makes it an easy candidate for cooking a few days ahead: make the base on Sunday, add yoghurt on the day you eat it.

Ingredients

The pumpkin is weighed prepared — skin and seeds removed. A whole 1.6 kg squash gives you roughly 1,000 g of usable flesh.

1,000 g pumpkin or butternut squash, cut into 2–3 cm cubes
200 g potato, peeled
150 g carrot
120 g onion (one large)
10 g garlic (2 cloves)
20 ml olive oil (about 1.5 tbsp)
900 ml vegetable or chicken stock, ideally low salt
300 g Greek yoghurt, 2% fat
30 g pumpkin seeds
1 tsp ground ginger (or 10 g fresh, grated)
a pinch of nutmeg, plus salt and freshly ground black pepper

Method

Halve the pumpkin, scoop out the seeds, peel it and cut into 2–3 cm cubes. Cut the potato and carrot to a similar size so everything softens at the same rate.
Heat the olive oil in a wide pan over medium heat and sweat the finely chopped onion for 4–5 minutes until soft and translucent. Do not let it colour.
Add the garlic and ginger and stir for 30–40 seconds, just until they smell fragrant.
Tip in the pumpkin, carrot and potato, stir, and let the vegetables sit against the base of the pan for 2 minutes. That bit of colour costs nothing and gives the soup depth.
Pour in the stock so the vegetables are only just covered, put the lid on and simmer gently for 20–25 minutes, until a fork slides through a cube of pumpkin with no resistance.
Blend with a stick blender straight in the pan for 1–2 minutes until completely smooth. If it feels too thick, loosen it with 50–100 ml of hot water.
Take the pan off the heat and let it stand for 4–5 minutes. Then temper the yoghurt: put the 300 g in a bowl, stir in 2–3 tablespoons of the hot soup, and return that mixture to the pan while stirring. The yoghurt stays smooth this way.
Season with salt, pepper and nutmeg. Toast the seeds in a dry pan for 2 minutes and scatter them over the bowls just before serving.

Nutrition per serving

These figures are an estimate per serving (one quarter of the recipe), worked out from the quantities listed above. Real values shift with the variety of squash, the fat content of the yoghurt and how salty your stock is.

Calories: around 330 kcal
Protein: around 14 g
Carbohydrate: around 44 g
Fat: around 11 g

About 7 g of that protein comes from the yoghurt, the rest from the seeds and the vegetables themselves. Respectable for a soup, but 330 kcal and 14 g of protein is a starter rather than a training meal on its own.

Variations and swaps

More protein. Add 400 g of diced chicken at step 5, lift the meat out before blending and return it to the smooth soup. That takes a serving to roughly 25 g of protein — the same trick used in this chicken and vegetable soup. Alternatively, stir 200 g of cooked lentils in after blending, as in the lentil stew.

Lactose free. Lactose-free Greek yoghurt behaves identically and has the same protein profile. Soya yoghurt works too; coconut yoghurt is far higher in fat and noticeably sweeter, so it changes the flavour.

Fewer carbs. Drop the potato and cut the stock to 750 ml. A serving falls to around 36 g of carbohydrate and the soup stays thick, because the squash binds plenty of liquid on its own.

Different seasoning. A teaspoon of mild curry paste or half a teaspoon of smoked paprika at step 3 changes the whole character. Pumpkin handles hot, sweet and smoky equally well.

What to serve with it. A slice of wholemeal bread adds roughly 80 kcal and 3 g of protein. If you want the meal to stand on its own, pair the soup with a chickpea and feta salad.

In short

Pumpkin, potato and carrot give the texture, stock gives the depth, and Greek yoghurt replaces the cream while adding protein instead of just fat. Forty-five minutes, three steps worth remembering: sweat, simmer, blend — then yoghurt last, off the heat.

The one mistake that ruins the result is adding yoghurt to soup that is still bubbling. Five minutes of patience and two spoonfuls of hot soup stirred into the yoghurt first solve it permanently.