Cooking a Big Pumpkin
/One of the 10 pumpkins my daughter and son-in-law bought for their pumpkin carving event was not used.
My daughter volunteered to bring it over for me to use as decoration for Thanksgiving or to cook; I decided to cook it. I had cooked smaller pumpkins whole…but this one was too big to fit in the oven. I cut it in half.
I scooped out the seeds and put the bottom half in a large pan.
After cooking, it for 1.5 hours at 350 degrees (the top half was covered with plastic wrap and put into the refrigerator to cook another day), it was soft enough that the pulp could be easily scrapped off the skin.
I filled two of my larger Pyrex containers with it and planned to use some in recipes the next day.
The next morning - I processed the pulp into puree in the food processor. It was a good color…more a yellow orange than a deep orange.
I made 3 recipes and used about 3 cups of the puree: pumpkin oatmeal muffins, pumpkin quiche, and pumpkin peanut powder soup.
I froze 2 cups of the puree, and another two cups is in the refrigerator. I’ll make a pumpkin custard with the refrigerator portion….and then I will cook the top of the big pumpkin. I am going trying a lot of pumpkin recipes over the next couple of months!
