The 5 Best Recipes for Cooking with Fresh Pumpkin
Use fresh pumpkin for a whole lot more than carving. Bring it into your favorite fall recipes, whether it's for dinner or dessert.
David Malosh
If you've ever made, say, a pumpkin pie at home, odds are you didn't get your pumpkin fresh from the patch. Pure pumpkin puree exists in canned form, making it one of the most-convenient ways to get your pumpkin fix all season (and, arguably, all year) long. This fall, however, we're celebrating the season by bringing fresh pumpkin into our recipes. Whether it's for dinner or dessert, these recipes use pumpkin for a whole lot more than carving.
Whether you serve it for Halloween, Thanksgiving or any kind of fall party, Food Network Magazine's Pumpkin Queso Fundido (pictured above) is the party-starting appetizer of your dreams. Use a roasted sugar pumpkin as your dip bowl and each scoop of this gooey, cheesy dip will take morsels of cooked pumpkin along with it.
This dish is tasty proof that pasta and pumpkin go together — and not because they both start with P. Fix Rachael Ray's recipe for Pasta with Pumpkin and Sage in just 25 minutes by tossing penne in a sauce of creamy pumpkin and sweet sausage.
Bake a pie that truly celebrates pumpkin: From-Scratch Pumpkin Pie. It's easy to make your own pumpkin puree by baking a sugar pumpkin, scooping out the tender pulp and pureeing in a food processor until smooth. Combine it with condensed milk, molasses, spices and eggs to make a filling, and pour it into an easy pie crust for a real slice of the fall season.
David Malosh
Food Network Magazine's Spicy Pumpkin and Collards side dish is as festive as it gets, with sauteed collard greens, tomatoes, onion and chiles baked right into a sugar pumpkin. After some time in the oven, the pumpkin will become nice and tender and the filling will become browned and bubbly.
Con Poulos
After roasting a sugar pumpkin in the oven, use it to make Anne Burrell's Pumpkin-Ginger Bread Pudding from Food Network Magazine. Combine the pureed pumpkin, eggs, cream, brown sugar and spices to make an easy pumpkin pudding. From there, you pour the from-scratch pudding over bread and bake it for an easy, sweet casserole that's fall in a dessert.
