A pumpkin is for eating, not just for carving!

It's that time of year again when you walk into any supermarket and are greeted at the door with huge boxes full of pumpkins ranging from 'small to extra large' and now, all sorts of colours and funky shapes.  

What do you do with yours?

I absolutely am guilty of buying pumpkins in years gone by purely to scoop out (and bin) all the middles and try to pretend I'm artistic and suddenly a master craftsman carver to create a wonderful piece of pumpkin art to put in my living room window without even a thought of using the pumpkin flesh as real actual food!  (By the way, I'm absolutely not any sort of artist and at age 45, I don't think my pumpkin carving skills are going to get any better than the average 8 year old's!).

These days, I start buying pumpkins as soon as they appear in the shops - for cooking and making delicious meals rather than for just attempting to appear artistic and skilled in carving!

Health benefits of pumpkin

Pumpkins are full of all sorts of goodness:  high in vitamins C, E as well as beta carotene (all of which are good for our skin and our eyes) as well as vitamin A, important for a healthy immune system.
Pumpkins are also high in fibre helping our digestion system and are particularly good for pregnant women due to their high folate content.

And you can eat all of it - skin, flesh and seeds (the only bit you want to discard, is the stringy bits inside).

I'll be adding a few pumpkin related posts over the next few weeks to help you with ideas of how to use yours, but one of the standard things I do with a pumpkin is to make a puree to keep in the fridge / freezer which I use in lots of dishes.

Pumpkin puree recipe

What you'll need:

- A pumpkin
- A sharp knife
- An oven (preheated to 180ºC / gas mark 4)
- A baking tray and baking paper
- A stick blender or an electric blender
- A jug / large bowl

Method

1) Slice the top off your pumpkin and then slice in half down the middle

2) Scoop out the seeds and stringy bits (its ok if you leave a few bits in there) - don't discard the seeds though, once rinsed and dried, you can add them to your breakfasts / salads etc) and also don't waste any flesh from the top bit you've sliced off either.

3) Place upside down on your baking paper lined baking tray.  You don't need to spray them with oil or add anything at this point (you want the puree to just be pure pumpkin so you can then add to either sweet or savoury dishes and add the flavouring when cooking).

4) Place in your pre-heated oven for 30 mins or until a knife slides in easily.

5) Take out of the oven and allow to cool enough to handle.
Using a spoon, scoop out the flesh from the skin, it should simply glide away from the skin. I keep the skins to add to a soup.

6) Put your pumpkin flesh in a blender and blitz until smooth or like I do, put it in a jug and use a stick blender.  I tend to do it in batches as flying pumpkin puree around my kitchen is not a good look.

Storage

It can be refridgerated for up to a week in the fridge or freeze it if you want to use it at a later date.

Uses

I'll add more recipes to my blog as to how I use my pumpkin puree over the next week but favourites are: spiced pumpkin oaty flapjacks, breakfast smoothie, soup, pasta sauce, risotto and currry but if you search 'pumpkin puree recipes' online, you'll find all sorts of delicious ways to use your pumpkin puree!.

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