Pumpkin Mash

My roommate went to  a pumpkin patch with a friend that was visiting from NYC and thoughtfully brought me home a pumpkin of my own.  Instead of carving it, I decided to hack it into pieces and eat it!

First, I cut it into big pieces and scooped out the seeds to be roasted with some kosher salt.

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds

Next, I cleaned out the rest of the pumpkin guts and placed large pieces of the pumpkin in baking dishes to roast in the oven.

However, I realized that I had a whole lot of pumpkin and not a lot of oven space.  Roasting pumpkin can take 45 minutes or so, meaning that 2 batches would take nearly an hour and a half, which just didn’t sound great to me.  I turned to the interwebs and found that you can microwave to pumpkin instead!  Into a pyrex baking dish the pumpkin went, and in two batches at 15 minutes a pop I had faux roasted pumpkins.

I scooped the flesh from the skin and mashed it with a potato masher.  [Note:  If you didn't drop your food processor bowl on the floor so that it cracked and made it useless, just give the pumpkin a whirl in that instead.  I now have biceps of steel!]

Now, what to do with this stuff??

Since mine is not super smooth, it didn’t work great in regular baked goods.  The muffins I made with it came out a bit lumpy and wet, despite draining the mashed pumpkin in a colander for an hour before using it.

My favorite use for it is either eaten straight up (it’s super sweet) or in my morning oatmeal.  I have plans to use it in some risotto later this week as well.  Since I have a bunch of it on hand now, I’ll probably put some in a freezer bag to use at a later time- possibly in the Pumpkin Baked Ziti recipe from Veganomicon (which you should buy this cookbook for).