Decree Harmony: Roasting Pumpkins for Recipes

I love squash, pretty much of any kind, in just about any way.
This time of year, pumpkins are my favorites. A few years ago I had no idea what the difference between some of them were. I assumed that the pumpkins some get to carve were the same ones you made pies out of. Found out the hard way that I was wrong.
The large carving ones have significantly more water and significantly less taste than pie pumpkins. Pie pumpkins are smaller, denser, and actually sweeter than the bigger ones. You can find them at some supermarkets and most pumpkin patches this time of year. I buy mine at an orchard that grows them for 2 dollars a piece. I can get the equivilent of 3 cans of pumpkin out of one. To me, its totally worth the effort, because it just tastes better.

I use a chefs knife for just about everything. I trained myself to use them when it was all I had in the kitchen for the first 2 years of marriage and then all of the culinary classes I took at WKU taught me that I could, in fact, do most everything with them. I have four of them. And I love them all.

Anyway, I cut the top off first by basically inserting my chefs knife all the way around. The pumpkin is soft enough about an inch out from the stem that it's fairly easy to do. I'm sure you could probably do it with whatever carving equipment you have for your other pumpkins if you need to.

So after this I just cut the sucker in half and scooped out the seeds and put them in a colander to deal with while the pumpkin was roasting.

I line my cookie sheets with foil. I've had these cookie sheets for at least 10 years and I love them and I find they preserve better if I line them with foil for things like this. I put about 1 tsp of canola oil and spread it around where the pumpkin was going to be and I set the oven at 350.

I made sure I washed the outside of the pumpkin so if it looks wet, thats why. Where we get our pumpkins from, they come directly from the pumpkin patch that morning and are generally covered in hard mud because it's been raining a lot here lately.

While it's roasting away, I start washing the seeds to roast them later. The membrane holding them together generally comes right off with a little hand washing

Pulled the pumpkins out of the oven after about 45 minutes, you can kind of tell that the one on the left is caved in some.

I peel mine while they are still hot, I've built up a tolerance to heat, so it's not that big of a deal but if you want to wait until they cool then that's fine too. They just peel easier while they are hot.

And then I put them in a bowl, get out my hand mixer and beat the puree until there aren't many chunks left. Since I don't can, I divide it up into freezer bags, 2 cups in each quart bag. I generally keep one out for smoothies or other recipes like a crust less pie. Or custard as the rest of the world calls it :) :)

While I was working on this, I blotted the seeds somewhat dry, tossed them with a couple TBS of canola oil and a couple tsp of salt and put them in the oven at 350. Stirring about every 10 minutes. They will stick no matter what at first because of the moisture coming out of the seeds, but eventually they wont and will become crispy. And delicious. I roasted mine in a glass dish because someone said they had better luck with roasting them that way. I'm indifferent. You can do them either way. This batch didn't see the light of another day but I made another batch later that went into some granola.