How to Make Fresh Pumpkin Puree'

Want to see how to make pumpkin puree out of pumkins so you can make homemade goodies like pie? Just look below to find out how.

1. Get pumpkin pie pumpkins. I picked mine in the field yesterday at Wieck's corn maze and Pumpkin patch (Wieck's Corn Maze & Pumpkin Patch). They are small, about 3-5 ponds each. I used three pumpkins in this tutorial and ended up with 8 cups of puree. You also need a cutting board, a butcher knife, a spoon for scraping the inside of the pumpkin out, and a bowl (2 bowls if you want to keep the seeds).

2. Lay the pumpkin on it's side on a cutting board. Cut the pumpkin in half, making sure your hands/fingers are out of the way.

I cut mine in half to the stem, then twisted the halves apart. The stem was attached on one half. I just pulled it off after cutting the pumpkin in half.

3. Take a spoon and scoop out the seeds and inner core. If you want to make homemade pumpkin seeds for snacking on later, place the seeds into a seperate bowl to save for later.

Make sure to scoop out all the seeds and the slippery, stringy insides so you only have a shell left. If you have what is called a "grapefruit spoon" with a serated tip, you can use that to help you scrape the inside of the pumpkin clean. The photo below shows a grapefruit spoon and a cleaned out pumpkin half.

 4. Take a rimmed cookie sheet (with sides) and line it with aluminum foil. I like to use the non-stick kind, but you can use regular. I also like to use the size foil that is big enough to cover the entire pan so no juices leak through. Place the pumpkin halves open side down on the foil lined pan.

5. Bake in an oven set at 350 degrees for about an hour. Check it for doneness by poking it with a fork. If it is tender inside, it is done. If it is still kind of hard to get the fork through the meaty part of the pumpkin, leave it to cook a while longer, up to 90 minutes. You don't want the outer skin to burn, though, that is cooked too much. Sometimes the skin will wrinkle up like in the photo below. That is OK. It means the pumpkin is cooking and softening up.

 

6. Take the pumpkins out of the oven and cool to room temperature on a cooling rack.

7. After the pumpkins have cooled, use a spoon to scoop out the meaty part away from the outer skin. Put all the cooked pumpkin into a bowl. Throw away the outer skin.

8. Now you want to mash up, actually puree', the pumpkin. You can use any of the following: blender, food processor, potato ricer, hand blender, or any other tool that can mash the pumpkin up so it looks kind of like thick pudding.

9. Now you can use your pumpkin puree' in your favorite recipe, like pumkin pie! Or you can package it up, like you see here and freeze it up to one year.