Yesterday I promised a post about the pumpkin I cooked. I’ve never cooked a pumpkin before, but I got this good-sized pumpkin for $1 last Saturday, so I thought it was a pretty good deal and figured it was time to give it a try. 🙂 (I did not think to take a picture of the pumpkin while it was whole.) Here’s what I did.

At my mom’s recommendation, I pressure-cooked the pumpkin. First, I cut the top off of the pumpkin and pulled out the “guts” with my hands, setting this muck aside in a bowl. Some of the strings didn’t really come off this way, though. I cut the pumpkin up, so I could fit it into the cooker. I cut it into 8 pieces, and 2 would fit into my cooker at a time. (It’s a 5L, I think.) After the pumpkin was cut up, I used my knife to scrape off most of the remaining strings. The photo above is of one “batch” of pumpkin, cut and ready to be popped into the pressure cooker.

I placed the insert  (little shallow tray to keep the pumpkin up out of the water) in the bottom of the pressure cooker  and put a little water in the bottom – not much, just enough to make enough steam to build pressure. I basically added water until it came up about to the top of the insert. Then I put the pumpkin in on top and locked on the lid. After bringing the pot to pressure, I cooked it for 8 minutes, then let the pressure come down naturally. (You could probably quick-release the pressure, but I was busy working on other parts of the pumpkin.)

When it was done cooking, the pumpkin looked like this – essentially the same, but quite soft. (This was not the first batch; that’s why there’s pumpkin all over the sides of the pot.) The rind scraped off very easily, where it wasn’t already completely separated from the flesh so I could just lift it off. I removed the rind and set it aside in a bowl to dump outside, and piled the cooked flesh into another bowl:

The cooked pumpkin was then dumped into my Vita-Mix, where I ran it on about 5, using the tamper, just for a few seconds until it was all pureed, resulting in this:

After dumping the puree back into the bowl from the Vita-Mix, I put it in the refrigerator to cool somewhat. Then I used a measuring cup to scoop it into labeled freezer bags. I squeezed out the air, sealed the bags, and laid them out flat on a cookie sheet before placing them in the freezer. (Once they were frozen, I removed the cookie sheet.) I got about 15-16 cups of pumpkin puree. (Oh. I almost forgot to mention the liquid. The pumpkin released a lot of liquid. With each consecutive batch I cooked, the pressure cooker contained more liquid. I just poured this off and saved it to use in smoothies or something.)

Meanwhile, I was working on the seeds. While I was waiting for the pressure-cooker to finish, I sorted the seeds from the pumpkin muck. (The muck gets thrown away.) I rinsed the the seeds by swishing them in a bowl of water, then pouring them into a strainer, and repeating this process two or three times. Once they were pretty clean, I put them back in the bowl, added water to cover and some salt (I didn’t measure.) and stirred them up. They sat in this salt water overnight. In the morning, I drained off the water and spread them out on a baking sheet. (Use one with rimmed edges!) I baked them at 250 until they were light brown – I think that was about 25-30 minutes. About halfway through, I sort of stirred/flipped them once. We have a little over a cup of seeds, I think, and are enjoying them as a snack.

The pumpkin puree can (as I understand it) be used in smoothies, pies, cookies, muffins, and bread, among other things. I’m looking forward to trying some new recipes. 🙂  [Note 1/9/2014: Homemade pumpkin purée is much less dry than the stuff you get in a can, so if you substitute this for that, you’ll want to decrease the liquid in your recipe.]