Homemade Pumpkin Puree

I made my own pumpkin puree!! It looks, smells and tastes great!! Here is what I did -

First, I bought 3 small-ish pumpkins. These are called pie pumpkins or sugar pumpkins at my local Whole Foods. Plus, they were on sale! Perfect for roasting and puree-ing.

I cut each pumpkin in half, scraped out all the "guts" and seeds. I didn't get all the little stringy things out, but I got the majority of them.

I flipped each half upside down in a pan, then put between 1/4" to 1/2" of water in the pan. I was told to roast the pumpkins in the oven at 350 degrees for 30-45 minutes. My oven apparently didn't agree with that. The first pumpkin I didn't put upside down in the pan with water, it was roasted at 350 degrees for almost 2 hours and it still wasn't completely tender. The 2nd one was roasted like the picture for 1 hours and 15 minutes at 350 degrees and was closer to tender, but not quite completely done. The 3rd one I roasted like the picture at 400 degrees for 45 minutes and it was perfect!!

Here is what it looked like coming out of the oven. It smelled lovely, the skin was wrinkled and the pumpkin was fork tender.

Both of the halves, flipped over. You can see some of my fork marks. Super soft pumpkin, nice golden yellow color..

The skin almost completely peeled off, I only had the cut it off around the top and the bottom. I cut the pumpkin up and puree-ed it in my blender. I don't have a food processor, but the pumpkin already had so much moisture in it, I didn't have to add any water. It was just a little more difficult to make in the blender, because the bottom of it where the blades are is so much smaller, but the puree came out amazing!!

This is the 3rd pumpkin!! It made a full-sized butter container of puree. Yummy!

These are the 1st and 2nd pumpkins. They were a little more water-based, but still good. I stuck the container in the fridge, waited until it was nicely cooled and then drained the excess water off the top. Yum, yum, yum!!

Here are my guts and seeds! I followed this link to make roasted pumpkin seeds. Great snack!! =]

They came out great!!

I also went ahead and baked with my pumpkin puree last night, but I'm going to do a different post in the next couple days with my own recipe I made up! =]