This is a delicious and nutritious soup packed with beef mince, vegetables and bone broth. The pumpkin itself makes such a beautiful rustic serving dish.
Preparation time - 30 minutes
Cook time - 1 hour 30 minutes
Serves - 4-6
Ingredients:
500g beef mince
1 onion, diced
2 carrots, diced
2 stalks celery, sliced
4 cloves garlic, diced
2 potatoes, diced
Handful of spinach, kale, or silverbeet, chopped
1 tin crushed tomatoes
3 tbsp tomato paste
1 tbsp dried oregano
3 tbsp fresh thyme leaves
Pinch of chili powder and nutmeg
3 cups beef stock
Grated cheese and/or sour cream to serve
Method:
Place a whole pumpkin on a baking tray into a preheated 150°C oven for 10 minutes to soften the skin. This step just makes cutting into the pumpkin easier.
Meanwhile, in a large soup pot, brown your beef mince. Add the onion, carrot, celery, and garlic and stir for 5 minutes until everything is nicely caramelised. The browner the mince, the more flavourful the soup will be.
Add the remaining soup ingredients and stir to combine. Season with salt and pepper and bring to the boil.
Remove the pumpkin from the oven and, using a sharp knife, cut a circle out of the top. Make sure you cut at an inward angle so the ‘lid’ doesn’t fall in when you put it back on.
Remove all the seeds and give the inside of the pumpkin a quick scrape with a spoon.
Ladle in the hot soup until the pumpkin is full. Place the lid on and transfer the whole thing back to the oven for 1.5 hours.
Test that the pumpkin is cooked by piercing it with a sharp knife.
Sprinkle over grated cheese and serve the soup, scraping the sides of the pumpkin with the ladle or spoon to ensure you are getting chunky bits of pumpkin too.
