Okay, so it turns out that the pumpkin pie you enjoy for dessert may have no actual pumpkin in it.Cite. Apparently, the FDA has decided to allow food processors (meaning the people who process foods, not that machine that sits unused on your kitchen shelf) to label just about any type of hard-shell squash as “pumpkin”. Turns out that the big, orange fruits we generally think of as pumpkins are notoriously hard to process, and given to inconsistencies and such. A much more consistent product for cooking can be produced by blending various types of hard-shell squashes.
Now, my husband is outraged over this. No pumpkin in the pumpkin pie? How can this be?? His belief in a benevolent God has been shattered (this must have been doubly traumatic, since, as of last I checked, he was an atheist). Me, I can’t work up a lot of ire over it. After all, dictionary.com lists the definition of pumpkin thusly:
a large, edible, orange-yellow fruit borne by a coarse, decumbent vine, Cucurbita pepo, of the gourd family.
the similar fruit of any of several related species, as C. maxima or C. moschata.
a plant bearing such fruit.
So, if you’re going with definition 2, the stuff in the cans is, indeed, pumpkin. Just not necessarily like we pictured it in our heads.
So, do you think that the labeling is misleading? What if the label contains an actual picture of a big orange pumpkin? Would a pie made from actual pumpkin be better? Would it be significantly different? Is this mundane and pointless enough for you?
Oh, wait, wasn’t there an OP somewhere in here? Sorry, my melons got in the way. They have a tendency to do that.
I don’t really like pumpkin. There are (obviously) a dozen other similar squashes that I think are more flavorful, easier to work with and produce a more consistent yield with less work. Add lots of sugar and spices and eggs and cream and in all honestly, your husband probably can’t tell the difference in a blind taste test. So to make the cook do extra work for some childhood ideal of pumpkin pie which isn’t as good anyway? Meh. Tell him to get over it.
Pumpkin pie is more about the spices, not the pumpkin.
Have your husband carve out the inside of a raw pumpkin and eat some. Then put some suger, cinnamon, clover and whateverelsegoesintopumpkinpie on a cracker and eat it. I’m sure he’ll prefer the cracker to the ickyness that is real pumpkin.
Well, I’ve already directed his attention to this thread, so he’s getting all this stuff direct from you guys.
Anyway, if he gets real, actual pumpkin pie from real, actual pumpkins, it’s going to be because he makes it. What does he think I am? June Cleaver? Hah!
I’ve found that using butternut squash in “pumpkin” pie makes it taste a lot more pumpkin-y, and it’s a lot easier to work with than pumpkin. Looks like they’ve discovered my secret.
I’ve made pumpkin pie from real pumpkins. It seemed like a good idea at the time. (no, I wasn’t drunk)
I’ll testify that it’s a whole bunch easier to have Mrs. Smith do it for you. Lot’s less mess and hand cramps from scraping the walls of the stupid pumpkin. And it tastes at least as good. Of course, YMMV.
I have too, but mostly because one year I took the kids to a pumpkin patch that had some beautiful white-skinned pumpkins that they were touting as bakers. Oh, man, was that good! Not much harder than glopping it out of a can, but that’s why one son and I now like pumpkin pie.
Maybe I’ll do that again this year, if I can find one.
Scraping the walls? Were you using one of those big decorative pumpkins that people tend to turn into Jack O’Lanterns? Cause the little pie pumpkins are quite easy to work with.
After moving to the lovely Netherlands I have discovered a sort of hole in the language: they do not appear to have a generic word for “squash”. They have special words for each kind of squash, but there is no, um, linguistic way to suggest that they are related.
(Dutch Dopers, if there is one, please tell me, neither Dearly Beloved nor my MIL can come up with one. But then neither ate squash on a regular basis until I started cooking around here).
And a hard shelled squash in Holland is nearly always labelled a pumpkin.
I regularly make pies and soups and bread and all kinds of things from actual pumpkins and other squash and, while they are not interchageable they all turn out well whichever you use. A bit of butternut squash in with pumpkin does give it a better texture, I slightly prefer a pie made with pumpkin + butternut squash.
I have a curried butternut squash soup sitting on the stove right now, actually.
I am lazy and never scraped a hard shell squash or a pumpkin in my life; I cut them in half (or quarters or whatever), pull out the seeds with a spoon or ice cream scoop, and bake them. Then you I the shell off after they cool, it separates all by itself and usually comes off in one piece.
To make a pie, you take the baked (or steamed if you must) pumpkin and cook it in butter in a pan until it carmelizes before you use it in your pie; otherwise it has a tendency to be watery and/or stringy.
After moving to the lovely Netherlands I have discovered a sort of hole in the language: they do not appear to have a generic word for “squash”. They have special words for each kind of squash, but there is no, um, linguistic way to suggest that they are related.
(Dutch Dopers, if there is one, please tell me, neither Dearly Beloved nor my MIL can come up with one. But then neither ate squash on a regular basis until I started cooking around here).
And a hard shelled squash in Holland is nearly always labelled a pumpkin.
I regularly make pies and soups and bread and all kinds of things from actual pumpkins and other squash and, while they are not interchageable they all turn out well whichever you use. A bit of butternut squash in with pumpkin does give it a better texture, I slightly prefer a pie made with pumpkin + butternut squash.
I have a curried butternut squash soup sitting on the stove right now, actually.
I am lazy and never scraped a hard shell squash or a pumpkin in my life; I cut them in half (or quarters or whatever), pull out the seeds with a spoon or ice cream scoop, and bake them. Then you peel the shell off after they cool, it separates all by itself and usually comes off in one piece.
To make a pie, you take the baked (or steamed if you must) pumpkin and cook it in butter in a pan until it carmelizes before you use it in your pie; otherwise it has a tendency to be watery and/or stringy.
Feh. I was never a big fan of pumpkin pie to begin with, but the first year I made Thanksgiving dinner, I decided to make one using canned pumpkin. It was rotten. The smell was enough to peel the paint off a Sherman tank. Needless to say, I’m a bit turned off on the whole pumpkin pie thing.
I made a pumpkin pie from a sugar pumpkin (not the carving kind) last weekend and it turned out fabulously. The secret (if you want to go to the trouble of doing it from scratch) is to bake the pumpkin, puree the flesh (obviously not the peel) and then put it through several layers of cheesecloth so that the liquid gets squeezed out and all you have left is pumpkin flesh. It takes quite a few steps and some time but I think it’s far better than any pie from canned pumpkin.
Sweet potatoes make similar pie, and I’ve made a lot of pumpkin/butternut squash soup, so I can imagine that a butternut squash would make a very good pie as well.
I’ve discovered that baking pumpkin seeds are much better from sugar pumpkins as well, maybe because they are smaller so it’s easy to get them nice and crispy.
