How to Freeze pumpkin puree
12.5 years ago freezing, halloween, pumpkin
After making my own pumpkin puree last year, I can’t go back to the old stuff in the cans. Last year I put the pumpkin puree into individual 1/2 cup plastic containers. This worked ok but given our full freezer it was pretty common for these hockey pucks to fall out from where they were wedge breaking on the floor (if I was luck enough to get my foot out of the way)
This year I am using a different technique to freeze these to use in pumpkin pie, pumpkin cheesecake (low carb version), pumpkin ice cream, or pumpkin bread this holiday season. Before you can freeze the pumpkin puree you need to get it from the pumpkin.
Step 1: Clean the pumpkin. Use a little water and scouring pad to remove loose dirt
Step 2: Remove stem and cut pumpkin in half. This will take a little muscle to get through but using a serrated blade should make quick work of this little pumpkin.
Step 3: Scoop out seeds and innards. Using an ice cream scoop scrape out the seeds and the stringy innards, you don’t have to get this completely clean as you can see below. I also decided to save a few seeds with hopes to grow my own sugar pumpkins next year using the seed saving techniques I have wrote about last year.
Step 4: Cut the pumpkin into smaller equally sized pieces. Once you have all the seeds and gunk out slice up the pumpkin halves into several equally sized pieces.
Step 5: Cook the pumpkin. Places pieces in a casserole dish and cover with top or if yours are overflowing your largest casserole dish like mine you can simply cover the dish with a piece of aluminum foil. Place in a preheated oven at 350F and cook the pumpkin for 45-90 minutes. The pumpkin is done cooking when you can slice through the pumpkin flesh with an edge of a fork with almost no effort.
Step 6: Blend. Use a large metal spoon to scape the pumpkin away from the skin and place into a blender and blend until smooth. If you have a very dry pumpkin like mine you might need to add a little water to get a good cortex going like above.
Step 7: Freeze. Scoop your pumpkin puree into a couple of cupcake pans and freeze for 24 hours. Then using both your thumbs apply a little pressure on the bottom of each frozen pumpkin puck to dislodge. My wife had a great idea of using those silicon cupcake liners to make getting them out easier….though we just purchased those a day too late so I had to deal with the muscle and cold finger technique. Place your dislodged pumpkin pucks into a freezer bag removing extra air with a straw and should be good to use for about 12 months…which is perfect when more pumpkins arrive and the process repeats.
Each puck is approximately 1/2 cup so just pull out and defrost as many as you need for your recipe. Given there are no additives or sugar involved I have also used this same puree as baby food, which our daughter seemed to enjoy, but I opted for some fresh banana bread for myself.
Summer harvest
13.6 years ago peppers, tomato
Well it hasn’t been a great year here in the Northwest for summer vegetables but got enough tomatoes and peppers to make some salsa and get stocked up with enough jalapeno pepper powder (been great on omelets) until next year.
With a larger abundance of ripe jalapeno peppers this batch of peppers have a more festive look to them.
Here are the peppers ground up, as you can see above this time I kept the seeds in for a little extra bite.
While picking my tomatoes I also picked some less ripe tomatoes which were not quite ripe but vines no longer were green. I will let these tomatoes ripen indoors, though the flavors will not be as good as garden fresh tomatoes still better than what I can get in my local grocery store.
