Who Wants Pumpkin Pie?

That is the question I may be asking all winter! Some friends gave us a GIANT pumpkin! It weighed more than my 6 year old, and was not much shorter than my 2 year old! It sat in my kitchen floor for a couple of weeks. I finally worked up the willpower to get started on it. I knew it would be an all day process. I cut into it at 10:00 am and finished rinsing the last dish at midnight. Jonathan and I took turns working on it. There was some sit and wait time, but the project took over my kitchen for 14 hours!

How do you prepare that much pumpkin? In pieces. Slowly. With lots of patience.

Step 1: Cut and seed the pumpkin. I did this in stages. We only cut up what we could fit in the oven. It took six batches to get it all roasted.

Step 2: Place in a roasting pan coated with vegetable oil. We had a large and a small pan. So we were able to do quite a bit in each batch.

Step 3: Cover and bake at 350 degrees for 60-90 minutes. A small batch in one roaster takes about 60 minutes. With both pans we needed up to 90 minutes. You want the pumpkin to be soft through to the skin.

Step 4: Remove from pan and cool. (If I was just doing one small pumpkin or a butternut squash, I would let it cool in the pan; but I wanted to get the next batch in the oven!) It took about an hour to be cool enough to pick up.






Step 5: Scrape the flesh from the rind. I used my Pampered Chef Scoop Loop to both seed the pumpkin and scrape the flesh out. It worked much better than anything I have tried before!




Step 6: Place the flesh in the food processor and puree.














Step 7: Place the pureed pumpkin in a strainer lined with flour sack cloth or other similar lint-free cloth.








Step 8: Squeeze as much water as you can from the pumpkin.

Step 9: Measure and bag the pumpkin. We did some 1 cup bags and some 2 cup bags because those are the measurements the recipes I use call for. Package the pumpkin according to the way you think you will use it.

Step 10: Freeze!

What did we end up with? 27 cups of pumpkin puree! My pie recipe calls for 1 cup of pumpkin. A batch of pumpkin bread (2 loaves) takes two cups. The soup recipe I found takes 2 cups. We still have 4 winter squash in our own garden that we need to process. We will have our fill of pumpkin pies, cakes, breads, cookies, and more!