Pumpkin Puree

It’s been a busy day here on the homestead. Started the day by trimming the goats hooves and lunch was a visit to the pumpkin patch to pick up some snacks for the kids and pie pumpkins for me.

I’ve never made homemade pumpkin purée but it’s one of those things I’ve been wanting to try so off to the ol’ World Wide Web to find a recipe. The recipe I found called for you to cook the pumpkin for 60 minutes at 400 degrees then cool enough to touch and scoop out the middle. Well I followed the recipe a little but I’m so bad about recipes and I tend to just follow some parts and others I don’t.

The first batch I followed the 60 minute train of thought. The pumpkin seemed a little dark so the next batch I cooked it for 50 minutes.

This one turned out much better so since I had one more to do I decided to experiment and go with 40 minutes.

45-50 minutes seems to be the perfect timing. The pumpkins come out beautifully browned and the skin still peels off easily. Did ya notice I said ‘peel’? Yeah that’s where I swayed from those directions I looked up.

Turns out, once the pumpkin is cooked, you can easily peel the skin right off so that’s exactly what I did.

Once I had all the pumpkin separated from the skin, I scooped it into a bowl and used the immersion blender to make it a purée.

There’s quite a bit of water remaining so I used some cheese cloth and a strainer to allow the the purée to release the water. After about half and hour I pulled up all the corners of the cheesecloth, twisted and used a little twine to tie it off.

I then allowed it to finish straining out the excess fluid.

Now it’s off to find some recipes to use all this beautiful pumpkin purée

There is so much chatter about whether or not canning pumpkin puree is safe due to the low acidity level so I decided to be safe and chose to freeze it versus canning. No sense taking any chances

Don’t forget to roast the pumpkin seeds. They make a great snack