Homemade Pumpkin Puree – tastes so much better than the store bought stuff, so easy to make, and gets your kitchen smellin’ like fall!
When I tell you I got so lucky when we found these baby pumpkins at Kroger… Literally the only pumpkins they had left were the cute tiny ones (which I bought too, but for another recipe), some small pumpkins with mold on them (yikes) and then 5 small pumpkins that had paintings on them…
So of course, the skin isn’t a part of the puree so I bought all the pumpkins with paintings on them. Don’t judge me, they’ll be put to good use.
Anywho, my mom never brought too many pumpkins in the house.
We never really carved them (because us kids didn’t like touching the nasty insides and she didn’t wanna clean up our mess).
And neither of my parents liked the taste of pumpkin so I only just started trying the different flavors that pumpkin goes with.
Like pumpkin spice (and all of the recipes it can go into like pumpkin pie and coffee), soups, cheesecake, and you can even eat the seeds!
I’ve never seen a vegetable be so universal! And literally every part of it can be eaten and what you don’t eat can be composted, so nothing is wasted!
Okay, okay… On with the recipe!
Homemade Pumpkin Puree
You’ll need:
- at least one pumpkin
Wow, with that many ingredients I don’t know how much harder this recipe is could get…HAHA kidding.
You’ll start by preheating the oven to 350 degrees.
While the oven is preheating, cut the top off your pumpkin and gut the pumpkin by taking out all the seeds and extra guck inside the pumpkin.
This part can be a little time consuming if you do it with your hands or you can use a spoon or the little scooper tool in the pumpkin carving tool set.
Once the pumpkin is officially gutted, place on a baking sheet (lined with aluminum foil for easy clean up) and place the top back on the pumpkin.
Place the baking sheet in the oven. The amount of time the pumpkin needs to bake for varies by the size of the pumpkin.
My 3 small pumpkins baked for an hour and came out perfectly done. But a pumpkin twice the size would need to bake for 2 hours.
When the pumpkin is done, let them cool for 10-15 minutes. Or you could do what I did, which was start to peel them immediately and burned myself multiple times. I don’t recommend this method.
Once the pumpkin is cool enough to be touched, peel the skin off. The skin should basically fall off. Throw the pumpkin meat into a blender.
Pumpkin is very watery so try to drain some of the water from the pumpkin meat before you blend it.
Blend the pumpkin until smooth and there is no chunks of pumpkin.
Store in a jar or container. Use in all of your pumpkin recipes, from coffee to pie to soup and stick around for how I turned the seeds into a tasty snack!
Homemade Pumpkin Puree
Ingredients
- at least 1 pumpkin
Instructions
- Preheat the oven to 350.
- Cut the top off of the pumpkin(s) and deseed and gut the pumpkin. Replace the top back on the pumpkin and place on a baking sheet. Place in the oven to cook for about an hour.
- Let cool for about 10-15 minutes. Peel the skin off and throw the pumpkin meat into a blender and blend until completely smooth.
- Store in a jar or air tight container.
Notes
- my pumpkins were about as tall as a 2 cup measuring cup and cooked for an hour. Pumpkins twice the size would need to be cooked for about 2 hours or until fork tender. The skin should peel off really easily.
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