Pumpkins - How to Process Part 1

Petra Cox: Hi, I am Petra Cox from Mom s Apple Pie Company in Occoquan, Virginia and today I am showing you, how to process pumpkin or squash from scratch, so that you can make pumpkin pies, pumpkin breads and other pumpkin desserts.

So here I have this is an amber-cup pumpkin. It is actually a squash biologically but this makes a really excellent pumpkin pie and believe it or not so does a butternut squash. Anytime you might use a pumpkin in a dessert you could also use butternut squash and it gives it a really nice bright orange color and a nice sweet flavor as well. It s almost more pumpkiny than pumpkin. So to process your squash or your pumpkin, you are going to need a nice sharp knife and some pretty deep baking pan and a little water and we are going to cook it in a 400 degree oven.

So to process the butternut squash, first I am going to cut it right before the bowl starts at the bottom. This way you have the really meaty part at the top and then the part at the bottom has a hollow area with the seeds, you can put the cut side down, so it is really nice and steady and then just cut straight down the middle. You can see that there are some seeds and some sort of pithy material on the inside there and that you do not need to take out just yet. You can take that out after it is already been cooked and you just put the cut side down on the bottom of an ungreased pan. Then for the top you do not have to take the little stem off yet, only if you want to. You cut straight down the middle and since this is not been cooked yet, of course it is really very hard to cut. So you got to use some force and sometimes you need to come at it from different angle but again you put the cut side down and as you can see with butternut squash, it is really nice to use because the top part is really full of meat and there is nothing that you have to hollow out. It s just a lot, you got about a cup of the pumpkin meat on each side.

I know it sounds funny to use a butternut squash in a pumpkin pie but it tastes really good. Here is our amber cup, it has that really bright beautiful color on the outside and you get this to really good wash down because they grow in the dirt. We grow these ourselves on our farm and we grow variety, because it s nice to use a variety of different kinds of flesh of pumpkins in a pie. So this one has sort of narrower side, it is going to take probably about half a pumpkin to make a pumpkin pie.

So I cut that in half and lay the cut side down and cut it again and lay it down in another pan, cut side down and this has the more seeds and other sort of foamy materials on the inside that we will scoop out when it s already been cooked. And at this point before putting in the oven, you want to add some water and it s probably about an inch of water on the bottom there. This is so that the pumpkin does not dry out and burn but you do not need to completely submerge the pumpkin and the water will steam up and evaporate in the oven and the level will go down but I must say, really hits the bottom of the pan you do not need to add more after you cook it.

So at this point it takes probably about 45 minutes in 375 degrees to 400 degrees oven to cook the pumpkin until it is nice and soft. The edges on the skin sometimes will get a little burnt looking but it is okay because that is just the skin and about midway, probably about after 20 minutes when you are using this pumpkin wedges, you can flip it over, so that the other side is exposed to the water and the side that was on the bottom of the pan is more exposed to the hot air in the oven.

So we are just going to fill this in the oven and it will be done in about 45 minutes and the next step after they have been baked, will be to drain the water and let it cool off before you throw the pumpkin meat in the food processor. That is step one of processing a pumpkin from scratch for nice pumpkin treat.