How to Bake a Whole Sugar Pumpkin to Process and Freeze

While Farmerboy was shopping for his Halloween pumpkins to carve, he brought home three sugar (or commonly tagged "pumpkin pie") pumpkins.  Why?  Who knows... Apparently, he felt that his mother would like to take on the challenge of making her own pumpkin puree from scratch.  UGH!!  My mind was filled with the idea of cutting the tough rinds, scraping out the seeds, cubing and cooking the remaining pumpkin.  The end result would probably be me with a soupy mess!  :(   

I was telling my Mom about my troubles one afternoon, when she mentioned having seen a program on TV that processed the pumpkins by baking them whole.  What?  I am not going to lie here... My mind was filled with exploding pumpkins and seedy guts hanging all over my oven.  I could tell later that evening that Mr. Hollow's thinking wasn't much different.  But, after a little research that surprisingly brought few results, my mind was made up to take a stab at this short cut.   Armed with very little knowledge (and after waiting for Mr. Hollow to leave for work), the little pumpkins went into the oven.  This is how I prepared and baked them:

All three pumpkins were washed and dried.  They were rubbed all over with a paper towel-- moistened in olive oil.  I took a pointed steak knife and pierced the rind all over (was hoping this would deter any explosions!).  They were then set directly on the oven rack with a cookie sheet on the rack immediately below them to catch any run off.  Next, I turned the oven on 400 degrees and let them bake for about an hour.  They were checked by pushing a knife through the pumpkin and into the flesh.  The rind and flesh were soft, so I knew that they were finished baking. The picture below is how they looked after removal from the oven.

 As you can see from the skin of the pumpkins in the photo below, I let them sit and cool for an hour.  They started to deflate and the rinds began to buckle.  Each pumpkin cut easily into quarters as if slicing through butter!  I used a wooden spoon to gently remove the seeds and loose stringy flesh.  Then, the same spoon slid the golden flesh effortlessly from the rind.  Due to the long cooling off period, some of the rinds could even be peeled by hand from the flesh.  How easy is that?

My Braun hand held processor turned the pumpkin flesh into a smooth puree.  Three pumpkins yielded 5 containers of pumpkin puree at 2 cups each.  Four of the containers are now in the deep freeze.  Not a bad haul for an afternoon of experimenting! :)

The next test was to make a pie.  I noticed that the pumpkin did seem a little runnier in the mixing stage... And the pie did bake a little longer than my pies made with canned pumpkin... But I am happy to say that it tasted absolutely perfect!

Did I ever tell you that my all time favorite dessert is Pumpkin Pie?    I don't even need Cool Whip to enjoy it! :)



I do not know if planting, harvesting and processing pumpkins on a larger scale is in my future, but the idea is certainly more tempting with this method! :)

Freezing Butternut and Acorn Squash

Here are my butternut squash. I cut off the stem end, halved them, scooped out the seeds, and turned them upside down on a cookie sheet that was covered in aluminum foil and sprayed with cooking spray. I poured a half a cup of water around them and put them in an oven at 350 degrees. It took about 1 hour and 20 minutes when my fork could go throught the skin and flesh easily. This is what they looked like pulled out from the oven.

This is the finished product. I found that using an ice cream scoop was pretty effective in getting the flesh from the skin. I mashed the flesh and whipped it with a beater until it was smooth. I measured it into 2 cup servings, put it in a Ziploc freezer bag, squeezed out the air, and stuck it in the freezer. Finished!

Did you wonder if I tried any of this? The answer is yes. It was nothing like I thought it would be. Of course, there was no other flavors or sugar on it, so I could get a true assessment. It tasted like a sweet potato -minus the sweet with a touch of stewed pumpkin -minus the sweeteners. I can see why this squash has been used in so many recipes to fill in for pumpkin. The taste is so very similar. It will be interesting to experiment with in the kitchen!

Here are the acorn squash. To keep them nice and mashable, I cut them in half, scooped out the seeds, put the flesh side down (flipped them over for the pic to cool), poured a half a cup of water around them, and baked them at 375 degrees for about an hour on a cookie sheet that was lined in foil and sprayed with cooking spray. I must say, these were very small in size, so I think that is the reason for the quick baking time.

Just wanted to add~Some of these little gems had a very tough skin, so thanks to a tip from the Internet, I scored a line from stem to tip on both sides, where my cut would be, and microwaved for 1 1/2 minutes. It heated them up enough to make for an easier cut. A word of caution, they are hot when they come out of the microwave, so be careful!

Here is the cooked product. With the rind being so tough, it was a whole lot quicker to use the ice cream scoop. It went faster than the butternut. Then, I proceeded to mash and blend until smooth. (I read a tip that a blender will pull any stringy pieces out if you didn't get the squash scooped out correctly before baking.) One could also use a hand puree blender, but my squash seemed to do well with the regular hand mixer. I packed them the same as the butternut for freezing.

I tried the acorn, also. Quite a difference from the butternut. I can see why my friends like this particular squash. It is a lot sweeter than the butternut, and the taste is strongly similar to the sweet potato which shocked me, since I am a huge fan of them. Just an interesting side note~ I read in more than one article that the more orange color on the acorn squash the sweeter the taste. Hmmm. I will have to test that info next year. I am sure all of these veggies (and squash are considered fruits as well due to their seeds) will be in my garden.

Here are a few bags of my frozen squash getting transferred to the deep freeze. The camera does not do the beautiful colors justice. Like I said in an earlier post, I want to go 'greener' in my life and more natural. It's time to open the door to some new flavors!

How to Freeze Zucchini

Here is my produce haul from my local stand: 7 zucchini, 8 butternut squash, and 12 acorn squash. I threw in a snake gourd to round it out and drove away with $10.00 worth of produce. This is a new food to my home. Yes, you heard me right. In 42 years of life, I have never tried any of these three home grown foods. Can you believe that? Me, the lover of the pioneering spirit, forager of natural sources of food, the woman that nearly choked off her flower bed with an incorrect placement of spearmint, has turned her back on this popular veggie source all of these years. (Of course, I cannot account for the Gerber years of 1968-69.) So what was the final push to make me buy?? A simple trip to the post office.

You can learn a lot in a small town post office, and the lady who fills in for the post master is a wealth of farming knowledge. Oh and by the way, she has a local produce stand at her farm! I have had people in the past tell me the glories of eating squash and zucchini bread, but the clincher was when this kind lady told me that butternut squash could be made into a pie similar to pumpkin. I do love pumpkin pie! How could that be? I would have to give it a try. Then she informed me that she still had a few left for sale. How lucky is that? I ran out to her farm and bought all of her butternut squash for 50 cents a piece. Then I spied the zucchini in a crate, I took all she had at 25 cents a piece. I moved on to the acorn squash that has been praised by many of my friends. I bought those for 3 for $1.00. Not bad! Off I went on my merry way with my bounty.

Now I must say that I do can and freeze other fall veggies and fruits, so time and space is always limited at this time of year. The answer was to store these items for use in the future. After checking the Internet and questioning the locals, I picked the most popular way of storing each item. I also picked up some new recipes to use them in!

Maybe I should ask for a food processor for Christmas? LOL The zucchini's were very large. I chose to grate them for use in bread. After some research, there is debate over blanching and freezing or just straight freezing. The unanimous vote from the preservation pros around here is grate, pack in Ziploc bags, and freeze. I made sure to squeeze the air out of the bag and made a note that many of my favorite food preservation bloggers praise Food Savers for keeping items fresh. (Another item for the Christmas list!) I also froze them in 2 cup measures which seemed to be common in many zucchini bread recipes. With this task done, I look forward to trying my new recipes and sharing them when the harvest season slows down. :)