How to Make Your Own Pureed Pumpkin
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What do you do with your leftover pumpkins? I hate to throw food away, even if they are decorations. After Halloween, you can roast up the pumpkins that you decorated with into pureed pumpkin and use them to add nutrition and flavor to dishes all winter long. I love using all the food I grow and buy.
You can even find uses for the pumpkin guts and pumpkin skin. (and don’t forget to roast the pumpkin seeds, here’s how!)
Pureed pumpkin recipe
Pie pumpkins work best for this recipe, but I have roasted all kinds of pumpkins and turned them into puree. The bigger ones don’t puree quite as smoothly, but they still work the same. I hate wasting food and I hate to see pumpkins going to waste after the holidays are over.
Roasted pumpkin puree
Take your pumpkin and remove the stem. If it doesn’t break off you can cut it off by cutting just below and slicing off the top portion of your pumpkin. Then cut the pumpkin in half. Be careful, they are pretty hard to cut. Scrape out the seeds and strings to set to the side.
Next, sprinkle the halves with salt and a little butter or olive oil. (You don’t have to put anything on them at all, they bake up just fine plain. I just like the extra flavor.) Place them, cut side down on a cookie sheet and roast at 350 degrees until they are tender when you poke them with a fork. This takes about an hour but differs depending on the size of your pumpkins.
Once the pumpkin is done, take it out of the oven and let it cool. Once it’s cool enough to handle, take a fork and scrape the meat out of the pumpkin into the blender or food processor. Discard the peeling (or compost it)
Blend it until smooth. That’s it, super simple.
Pureed pumpkin recipes
There are a thousand ways to use pureed pumpkin. You can make a pumpkin pie or pumpkin bars, but you can also use it in breads, pancakes, and so much more. You can even make these amazing pumpkin cookies. Here are a bunch of pumpkin recipes to make with kids. These adorable are great too!
I use pumpkin puree to boost the nutrition in many dishes. You can’t even tell it’s there. Add a cup to your pancake batter and reduce the milk by 1/3 a cup. Make pumpkin bread or muffins. Add a cup of puree to your tomato sauce, pot of soup or stew, or other sauces you make.
Pumpkin is super nutritious and it has tons of fiber, so it’s a wonderful ingredient to sneak in food.
Can you freeze pumpkin puree?
You sure can! It freezes great. I like to freeze it in one cup servings so I can use it in recipes as needed.
I put 4 cups in a Ziploc bag, squeeze out all the air, lay it flat and divide it into 4 pieces with my hand, then fold it over where I divided it. Then, I freeze it folded up and after it’s frozen, I lay it flat. This way, I can take out one cup or two as needed.
Write pureed pumpkin on the bag and the date so you’ll know how long it’s been in there. It keeps at least 6 months this way.
Once you see how easy it is to make your own homemade pumpkin puree, you’ll never touch the store-bought stuff again. It just does not taste anywhere near as good as homemade and it’s a cinch to make.
