These Pumpkin Recipes Will Have You Rethinking Fall Dining (2024)

FAQs

What food goes well with pumpkin? ›

Create savory dishes by pairing pumpkin with spices like chilies, cajun, cayenne or pepper. Pumpkin also works well with the subtle flavors of nuts like almonds, pecans and walnuts, or common base ingredients like oats, rice or pasta.

The best type of pumpkin for cooking and baking

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).

Once the vines are growing strongly, then start adding a nitrogen-heavy fertilizer such as blood meal or feather meal. These products tend to come in granular form and are applied around the plants and watered into the soil. You can get natural organic blood meal from Burpee.

For even more flavor, you can add spices (like the celebrated pumpkin pie spice!) to the purée during the cooking step. Heating spices “blooms” them, releasing their flavorful, fragrant oils.

Canned pumpkin (labeled as "100% pure pumpkin") is a purée of pumpkin that is sometimes mixed with other kinds of winter squash. It is unsweetened and does not contain any added spices. Canned pumpkin and pumpkin puree are the same thing, and you'll often see the terms used interchangeably in recipes and cookbooks.

A pumpkin, from a botanist's perspective, is a fruit because it's a product of the seed-bearing structure of flowering plants. Vegetables, on the other hand, are the edible portion of plants such as leaves, stems, roots, bullbs, flowers, and tubers.

Blue cheeses like gorgonzola team up well with the notes of dried fruit typical of pumpkin. Another excellent pairing is with a nice fresh goat's cheese since its acidulous notes offset the sweetness of pumpkin.

Pumpkin: While pumpkin is a classic fall flavor, pumpkin and the collection of pumpkin spices (cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and allspice) are a perfect compliment to blueberry desserts. Try making a blueberry-pumpkin spice pie or muffins for a distinctive autumn flavor.

Pumpkin is notorious for pairing well with warm winter spices – as found in a variety of Moroccan-inspired cuisines. Try incorporating cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, ginger, cumin and chilli with your pumpkin dishes for flavour-packed feasts.

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.

Do you need to peel pumpkin before cooking? ›

If the pumpkin is particularly big, cut it into quarters then, using a small, sharp knife, pare off the skin (unless you plan to roast it, in which case the skin can stay on). Then cut into chunks or wedges as required.

Yes, dogs can eat pumpkin and it is actually often added to dog foods. Check the label of some dog treats and you may find pumpkin on the ingredient list there too. However, if you are feeding fresh pumpkin, you will need to be careful about which part you're feeding as the stem and leaves are covered in prickly hairs.

Popular blends of pumpkin spice include warming flavors that are often found in baking, like ginger, nutmeg, allspice, cloves, and cinnamon. While different blends vary in proportions and some other spices may be be included in smaller quantities, those spices tend to be the most popular.

Dark cream or sweet oloroso sherry

Delectable raisiny sherry is also a great match for pumpkin pie - and incredibly good value.

Which part of the pumpkin can I eat? You can eat all of the pumpkin - except for its stalk. Whether you can eat the skin or not depends on the variety. Smaller varieties such as onion squash have deliciously edible skin, the skin of larger varieties may be too tough to eat or less than appealing.