Processing Homegrown Pumpkins

Pumpkins can be seen all over the place right now being used as a fall decorations, placed beside doorways, on hay bales, and on tables as a centerpiece.  Although they look nice, the best thing about pumpkins is eating them.  We grew some New England Sugar Pie pumpkins and and, as their name suggests, they are made for eating.  These aren't the big jack o'lantern type pumpkins.  These are smaller pumpkins than those.

Here are a batch of seven of them that are ready for processing.  We'll go through this process pretty quickly, because it is a simple job, but it is important to know how to process them, because if you grow them, you'll want to make some pies. Processing pumpkins readies them for pie making.  Let's do this.

Seven New England Sugar Pie Pumpkins

Get a sharp knife and cut the top off and then cut them in half.

Use a spoon to scoop out all of the seeds from the interior of the pumpkin.  Be sure to save all the seeds!

Scooping out all of the seeds

I preheated the oven to 350 degrees and lined the cut up pumpkin, skin side down, in a baking pan and cooked the pumpkin for about 45 minutes or until tender.

Into the oven!

Once you remove the pumpkin from the oven, I used a sharp knife to remove the skins, just leaving the pumpkin flesh.

Removing the skins

Load the pieces of pumpkin with the skins removed into food processor.

I hit the puree button and let the blade chop it all up, checking it a few times until all of the pieces were uniformly pureed.

Here is what the beautiful pumpkin puree looks like.  This is the main ingredient of some delicious pumpkin pies and empanadas. 

Pumpkin Puree

The pumpkin pies that Tricia makes call for 2 cups of pumpkin, so I store 2 cups of pumpkin puree in each quart-sized freezer bag.

We'll squeeze out all the air out of the freezer bags and flatten out the bags.  Then we will stack them in the freezer.  Flattened out like that, they don't take up much space at all.

Two future pumpkin pies

Soon we'll be experiencing colder weather and will have a roaring fire in the fireplace.  A nice pumpkin pie will be baking in the oven, filling the house with the aroma of the season.  I can't wait!