Pumpkin Pie

Since I had such good luck a few weeks ago with the pumpkin pie from scratch (I didn’t make the crust but I did cut up a real pie pumpkin to use) I decided to make pies for Thanksgiving with our leftover Halloween pumpkins. Now we didn’t carve our pumpkins this year – I’m not sure why my daughter insisted on them if she wasn’t intending to carve them so they were just sitting outside on the porch whole. The cool weather we have been having helped keep them from going bad so they were ripe and ready to go this afternoon.
First I washed the outside. Next I cut open the pumpkin and cleaned out the seeds and stringy stuff (put it in the compost pile – maybe we will get pumpkins next year!) Then I cut it up into smaller pieces that will fit in a pan to steam.






I steamed it for about 20 minutes. Once the meat of the pumpkin is tender and the outside shell pulls off easily it’s ready. (I did notice that with pie pumpkins the shell either pulls right off or is very easy to scrape the meat out of - jack-o-lantern pumpkins - not so much.) I placed everything in a colander to drain the excess steam out. Pull the outside shell off (or dig the tender meat out – which ever works best. It depends on the type of pumpkin you use.)





Place the meat into a blender or food processer to get to a consistency of pie filling.



You are now ready to use this pumpkin in any pie recipe you like.



The National Center for Home Food Preservation does not recommend you can pumpkin pie filling. You CAN freeze cubed pumpkin which is what I will be doing with it soon. For now I just put the chunks in a freezer bag and froze it. You really need to steam it and cut it into chunks to freeze it properly.



For more information about preserving your pumpkin see the website: http://nchfp.uga.edu/tips/fall/pumpkins.html