Baked Pumpkin | Vegetables Recipes | Jamie Oliver Recipes (2024)

FAQs

What is the best pumpkin for baking? ›

For cooking, you'll want to use sugar pumpkins (also called pie or sweet pumpkins), which are small and round. Long Island Cheese pumpkins, which are more oblong and can look like a wheel of cheese, are also good to eat. Field pumpkin types are larger, have watery, stringy flesh, and are best for decorating.

Arrange the halves cut-side-down on the pan. Roast at 350ºF until tender, about 45 minutes. A fork should easily piece through the shell, and it should look visibly darker in color. Let the pumpkin cool until you can handle it, then scoop out the tender insides and puree in a food processor until smooth.

There are a few ways you can prepare your pumpkin, I recommend either steaming it or oven roasting/baking it. Both of them are great, but I feel like the roasting brings out a little more of the sweetness due to sugar caramelization. Steaming seems to cook faster, however, there's usually a bit more prep involved.

Preheat oven to 350. Pierce the pumpkin deeply with a fork 4-5 times around the exterior. Spray a sheet pan and the exterior of the pumpkin with non-stick cooking spray. Place the pumpkin onto the sheet pan and place the entire thing into the preheated oven.

The claim is that these pumpkins have been grown specifically for pumpkin puree in cooking and baking, so the result is a sweeter and creamier product. Interesting. Of course, anything that's been canned will likely taste different than the fresh product.

Sugar pumpkins are also denser and contain allot less water than carving pumpkins, making them better for baking. Just because carving pumpkins are not ideal to roast and make into pies does not mean that they are not edible.

Cook it on the stove

It involves nothing more than cooking canned pumpkin on the stove for a few minutes. This trick works because adding heat to the purée releases the natural pumpkin flavor, elevating it from barely there to wow.

It may seem tempting, but I wouldn't recommend cooking with the big pumpkins you normally get at the pumpkin patch. They tend to be very stringy and not flavorful. Instead, I recommend using a pie pumpkin or sugar pumpkin (pictured above).

Honestly whether or not you peel is completely up to you. If you are making pumpkin for pumpkin puree, then there is no need to peel the skin first because the flesh just gets pulled away from the skin. However, if you want to make cubed roasted pumpkin, then it is best to peel before you roast it in the oven.

Everything from inside your pumpkin can be recycled or used. Pumpkin innards, the stringy orange mess which you scoop out with a spoon ahead of carving, can be roasted, or pureed for cooking in soups. And the pumpkin seeds can easily be roasted (see below).

Can you use any pumpkin for baking? ›

Choose Your Pumpkin

Large field pumpkins, which are bred for jack-o'-lanterns, are too flavorless and stringy for baking. A medium-sized (4-pound) sugar pumpkin should yield around 1½ cups of mashed pumpkin. This purée can be used in all your recipes calling for canned pumpkin.

Small Sugar

Possibly our sweetest pumpkin, Small Sugar is just the right size for roasting in the oven. The vigorous vines are heavy producers, forming many under-10-pound fruits that are ripe for picking 95 days from transplant. Small Sugar's smooth texture and rich flavor make it a perfect variety for pies and soups.

Heirlooms are perfect for decorating but they really shine when used in the kitchen they are all edible with very different taste. Description and how to use the pumpkins are listed by each pumpkin. I use many of them in my baking.

Large pumpkins that we traditionally think of as jack-o-lanterns aren't ideal for pie as they are very stringy and have a lot of seeds. There really isn't very much “meat” to the larger pumpkins. Sugar pumpkins, also known as pie pumpkins, are sweeter. They are also pretty small.