Azuki Bean And Japanese Pumpkin Soup Recipe (With Video)

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Hey guys! This is Heather from HealthyVeganRecipes.net. So I’m really excited to share today’s recipe with you guys because it comes from this awesome cookbook that I have called Blissful Bites which is by Christy Morgan of the Blissfulchef.com.

And I’ve found a perfect recipe in here, I think for a post Thanksgiving meal. It’s a Azuki beans and Japanese pumpkin soup. Now the beans are called aduki, azuki, adzuki. There’s a few different spelling but they’re the little red ones and you can buy them dried or canned.

The great thing about azuki beans is that they’re cleansing for the system and Christy even mentioned in the intro to this soup “The Japanese use azuki beans for their many health benefits including improved blood circulation and reduce fatigue, detoxify body skin and organs and healthy digestive system”

So, perfect way to clean up the crud from Thanksgiving, if you had a bunch of treat and get back on track plus its super yummy and satisfying, all of the same time.

So as you can tell from that intro this is a great book for healthy eating. I love her approach. She is somewhat macrobiotic for those of you who know what that means but basically she follows almost all the same principles I do which is awesome.

So to start up your soup you gotta need those beans and if you can’t find azuki then just go with some black beans. They’ll be fairly similar and like I said you can use dried beans or you can use canned.

Christy’s recipe starts with dried beans and that’s one that I’ve done today but if you wanna use canned that’s fine. Just rinse that and get ready to go, for the measurements and the recipe just head over at my site HealthyVeganRecipes.net. And I will post the recipe from her book there. She was nice enough to let me share it with you guys.

So, I’ve got the azuki beans cook with a couple of bay leaves in there to get them flavored and then we’re gonna do is move on and add our squash. Now this was labelled a kabocha squash in the store.

It doesn’t look like a kabosha squash like I gotten in the past. Perhaps it’s just an orange variety or perhaps it was mislabelled but you can use any type of squash, go for a soft one so if you can’t find a kabocha squash then try a butternut or honeynut squash.

So we’re gonna get this chopped up, just take off the skin, take the seeds out from the middle. You can roast those in the oven if you like, very nice and get this cut into smallish cubes.

Alright, so there’s my squash all cut up and if you do sizes that are the same for the pieces then they’ll cook evenly but what I actually want to do with the squash is purposely cut them slightly different. I mean they’re still fairly the same size but if I have some bigger chunks they’ll stay more solid whereassome smaller chunks will really get really really soft and almost dissolve into the soup.

And I just really like the difference in the texture but you want them roughly the same size and then I’m gonna stir them with my azuki beans that are cook here. You can find directions, I’ll will post a link to directions on how to cook beans from dry but again you can easily use canned.

And then to this you’re gonna add some vegetable broth and to be honest what I’m adding is actually I’m gonna do water with some Herbamere because this stuff is sea salt with herbs and vegetables and some kelp. So it’s basically like a veggie broth cube that you will put into water.

You can also make your own vegetable broth, it’s really really easy. Just put some vegetables into a pot of boiling water, boil it for awhile, let the flavor come out of those vegetables and you’ll have yourself a beautiful fresh vegetable broth.

Really great for using up the ends of vegetables so the outside of an onion, the stalk of broccoli, anything that you don’t use normally in your cooking. Save it in a bag and make a broth out of it. Awesome!

Ok, so you do want to have some type of flavor in here along with some salt. Mine is included in the herbamere it has quite a bit of salt so I’m not using much of that but you definitely want some flavor because those beans on their own are pretty bland so pump them full of flavor and Christy’s suggestion of a vegetable broth so put the lid on your soup pot. Bring it to a boil and simmer it for twenty minutes.

Alright, 20 minutes and your squash should be starting to soften up and then what you’re gonna do is add some carrot. You’re gonna chop up two large carrots so those are some very large carrots but I like it so I’m good with it.

Those are gonna go in for 5 minutes and while you give your carrots those last five minutes, you can get those last little things prepared which are some miso which is a soy bean paste and some fresh parsley or cilantro chopped up finely.

So there’s my parsley, I love that Christy gives the option of parsley or cilantro because I am not so much of a fan of the cilantro and then I got a little side as a garnish and here is my miso and it comes as a paste and what Christy says to do here is to dissolve this in some of the vegetable broth from the soup. So just stir it up and get it so that it dissolve.

You don’t want to heat miso too much so we’re gonna add it at the very end with the fresh parsley because heat will destroy the natural enzymes in your miso and the flavor and nutrients in the fresh herbs so those are the things best add in the very end.

Alright, so get that miso and the fresh herbs stir in there and it’s time to give it a little taste, very very nice. Now just the broth, ok last seasoning is some pepper. Christy says to use white, I don’t have any so I’m using black.

White is the softer flavor so it mixes in here a lot better but black pepper will work if you don’t have any red and the final little tidbit that I have for this soup is one of my favorite thing about Christy’s book and I’ll get into all of the reason why I love it next week when I do a little cookbook review for you guys but one of those reasons is that she has a whole chapter dedicated to incorporating sea vegetables into recipes.

And sea vegetables are an amazing source of minerals and there’s something that we don’t eat a lot because people don’t know how to use them so she gives a whole bunch of great recipes, one of which is very very simple and I got it right here, it’s just pumpkin seeds ground up with some seaweed and I used kelp.

I forget exactly what she had on the book maybe dulce but whatever type of seaweed you use just grind it up with pumpkin seeds and then you use it as a condiment so you can sprinkle it on top. I’m gonna put it on top of the soup.

It adds a nice salty rich nutty kind of topping. You can make variations on this of course. You can use sunflower seeds, almonds, cashews, macadamia nuts, whatever you think up, try it because it’s really really awesome and really really healthy for you.

Alright, so that’s it for me today. I hope you enjoy this soup, thank you Christy for letting me share it and I hope you guys appreciate how awesome it is and stay tune next week.

I will post a review of her cook book and tell you some more of the deliciousness that’s in there over at HealthyEatingStartsHere.com and this recipe is available over at HealthyVeganRecipes.net. Alright, thanks guys! See you next time.