Recipes with pumpkin??

valk_scot

Most pumpkins are pretty foul imho, and I've tried growing at least a dozen different varieties over the years. The only vaguely interesting one is Turks Turban, which at least looks lovely! Now I grow "big orange ones" for the kids and recycle them straight to the compost bin after Halloween. One year I grew an 80lbs pumpkin...no, I didn't scoop that out myself, I took it to the school nursery!

laurel7172

I just scraped out a pumpkin. I've said elsewhere that carving pumpkins are inedible, and I use butternut squash in the UK for any recipe requiring pumpkin.

However, I decided to give it another go. The flesh was woolly and tasteless, so I decided to roast it. After an hour, it was still woolly and tasteless, but with a slight bitter aftertaste. I fried up some onions with spices, and mixed in the pumpkin. Slimy, bitter, woolly and tasteless. I threw in a tin of tomatoes and a couple of tins of kidney beans, then some tomato puree and an entire dessertspoon of chilli flakes. Then some sweetcorn to distract from the colour and texture.

I've just had some on toast for supper, and it's...er...edible... I bought an ENORMOUS £1 whoopsied pumpkin in Lidl earlier (the size that was £5 each earlier in the week), and I'm now looking at two full mixing bowls of scraped out flesh and thinking....compost.

Mrs_Thrify

Hiya, I have bought several pumpkins for cooking from Tesco this year. I am just wondering if people realise the pumpkins for cooking are in the veg isle with all the other veg. Small, deep orange and about 75 pence. The halloween ones are much larger and not so good for eating with less flavour.

tiff

laurel7172 wrote: »

I just scraped out a pumpkin. I've said elsewhere that carving pumpkins are inedible, and I use butternut squash in the UK for any recipe requiring pumpkin.

However, I decided to give it another go. The flesh was woolly and tasteless, so I decided to roast it. After an hour, it was still woolly and tasteless, but with a slight bitter aftertaste. I fried up some onions with spices, and mixed in the pumpkin. Slimy, bitter, woolly and tasteless. I threw in a tin of tomatoes and a couple of tins of kidney beans, then some tomato puree and an entire dessertspoon of chilli flakes. Then some sweetcorn to distract from the colour and texture.

I've just had some on toast for supper, and it's...er...edible... I bought an ENORMOUS £1 whoopsied pumpkin in Lidl earlier (the size that was £5 each earlier in the week), and I'm now looking at two full mixing bowls of scraped out flesh and thinking....compost.

If you're displaying pumpkins outside, you could use the inside mush as pumpkin "vomit". Just put it in front of the pumpkin, looks gross but it is Halloween! I saw a pic of this earlier, very effective lol

thriftlady_2

I suppose this should be added to an existing thread but the search facility has defeated me, sorry Penny and Pink:o

I was wondering how your halloween pumpkins were being stretched this year. I got a fairly big one for £2 from the farm shop. This is what I've done/will be doing with it;

1) Carved a face on it and stuck candles inside

2) With the flesh scraped out I made a ginormous pan of pumpkin and coconut soup. This fed 3 of us yesterday and will feed 5 of us today with leftovers quite likely.

3) I washed and roasted the seeds with olive oil and cajun spices. They were gobbled up by dd, ds2 and OH, I found them a bit fibrous.

This morning I have sliced the pumpkin head into long wedges, sprinkled with olive oil, salt, pepper and sage and roasted till soft. I had two large baking trays full. When it is cool I'm going to peel off the skin and chop the flesh.

4) With the flesh I will make a pumpkin curry with beans -kidney beans probably.

5) I will have enough roasted pumpkin to make a pasta bake (pumpkin, crispy bacon and cheese sauce over rigatoni OK it's macaroni cheese with pumpkin in).

6) I think there will still be lots left over so I will freeze that for future soups, stews or curries. If I had roasted it without salt, pepper, sage and olive oil I could have used it for sweet muffins, pie or pumpkin bread. I could still make savoury muffins though.

Not bad for £2;)

Aril

I am in awe Thriftlady! I've got as far as erm drawing a face on ours as we ran out of time for carving it and I've got romantic ideas of freezing the flesh and cooking the seeds which I hope will come to fruition:D. I shall use the flesh in a spicy soup of some sort and then compost the skin so nothing to landfill.
Aril

rach

well done thriftlady...I wonder if there are any cheap ones in the shops today!? I might have a look, i love pumpkin.

Boodle

This year, hallowe'en has just creeped up on me and so I never got around to getting a pumpkin this year. Reading your post makes me wish I had... (Although last night we did have a lovely dip of butternut squash mashed with some dried sage and drizzled with olive oil, which also makes a lovely pate. That would probably work well with pumpkin too.)

maro11

I have also used up my pumpkin.Made spicy pumpkin soup, pumpkin and pancetta risotto, pumpkin mash, and roasted the seeds for OH. Myself and DD love pumpkin but OH only likes the seeds.

HariboJunkie

I think you've beaten me Thrifty but I did better than usual this year.

From 2 huge 98p each pumpkins from lidl I have...

1... 2 lovely big lanterns which will be chopped and roasted and frozen for winter soups.

2. 1 pot of curried pumpkin soup which also used up some leftover veg from Friday's tea. This has done us lunch yesterday and today, so 8 portions.

3. huge bag of washed seeds ready to be roasted.

4. Roasted the other pumpkin flesh yesterday. Half of which is simmering away as pumpkin and parsnip soup for this weeks lunches (another 8 portions)

5. A quarter of it is ready to be used in pumkin and carrot muffins and a quarter for pumpkin and pecan muffins.

Again, very good value with at least 24 portions of soup, 2 dozen muffins and some seeds...;)