I hate food waste but love a challenge so here are my recipes to use up ALL the contents of your pumpkin this Halloween after you carve your creation! The flesh, seeds and stringy guts! This is one of the Workplace Cookery Demos I am presenting virtually this October. While the smaller pumpkins tend to be sweeter and better for making pumpkin pie, soup etc the larger Jack-o- lantern style pumpkins can be eaten also!,
Where to buy your pumpkins? Most large supermarkets are selling Irish grown pumpkins, however with the cost so low, I wonder how much the farmer gets for each pumpkin.? I prefer to buy mine from local farmers markets or farm shops where it cuts out the middle man and the money goes straight to the farmer, Near me I have McNally Farm, Airfield, Kilruddery market, or places that cn deliver nationwide like Green earth organics, Fallon and Byrne, Or you can check out various pumpkin patches around the country
and choose you own!
Have three containers ready;
one for the flesh,
one with water which will be for the seeds and
one for the stringy guts!
As you pull out the guts and seeds, try to separate them but if seeds are stuck to the stringy flesh then add it to the bowl with water as this will help separate them.
I find moving a large metal spoon inside the pumpkin to scrape off the flesh works best. It should be easy to lift out the seeds from the top of the bowl with water and place on a baking tray, then you can gently squeeze out the stringy guts and add them to the bowl ready to make the pumpkin bread.
Pumpkin Bread Recipe
This takes 10 mins to prepare and 1 hour to cook. It makes two loaves. This is more of a cake really than a bread, think banana bread! It is delicious warm, with butter and a cup of tea! It freezes well too, best to slice first.
makes two loaves - 24 slices
Ingredients
300g coarse wholemeal flour
125g plain white flour
375g sugar or substitute like stevia erylite
2tsp cinnamon
1 nutmeg, grated
2 tsp bread soda
1 tsp salt
4 eggs, beaten
175g butter, melted
250g of stringy pumpkin guts
125g chopped pecans or walnuts (optional)
Method
Pumpkin Soup Recipe
This is a tasty soup to use up the flesh part of the pumpkin
Ingredients:
2 onions, chopped
2 cloves garlic, crushed
Pumpkin flesh from med pumpkin (approx 2kg)
600ml Vegetable stock
400ml tin coconut milk (optional)
Pepper and salt
Method
Pumpkin Seed recipe
Ingredients:
Pumpkin seeds from the inside of you pumpkin
1 -2 tsp Bragg Liquid Aminos (or nice soy sauce/tamari)
Method: