Today's kitchen mistake: Freezing pumpkin

So we had these two quite large pumpkins sitting in our backyard, grown by a friend, that didn't get carved for Halloween. Every time I walked past them I felt guilty that they would probably just sit there until they rotted and had to be thrown in the composter. Coming from a farm family background, I have an ingrained urge to preserve or freeze the bounty of the yard and garden, which I normally manage to suppress except for my annual jam rituals. These pumpkins, however, seemed particularly reproachful, just sitting there in the grass beside the back step as the autumn leaves piled up around them.

This morning I thought, with the whole day pretty much free ahead of me, I should take an hour or so first thing this morning and get one of them prepared and frozen. I struggled it into the kitchen, worrying that it was too heavy and I would throw my back out, but I managed to sit it in the sink. Well, it was actually too big to go IN the sink, so it was more balanced OVER the sink. I found instructions on the internet, at the National Center for Home Food Preservation website, which sounded very simple:

Preparation – Select full-colored mature pumpkin with fine texture. Wash, cut into cooking-size sections and remove seeds.

Cook until soft in boiling water, in steam, in a pressure cooker or in an oven. Remove pulp from rind and mash. To cool, place pan containing pumpkin in cold water and stir occasionally. Package, leaving ½-inch headspace. Seal and freeze.

Easy peasy. I began cutting the pumpkin into cooking-size sections. Or rather, I began hacking the pumpkin into whatever size chunks I could manage, using the pumpkin carving knife which the kids had used to craft their jack-o-lanterns and a huge breadknife by turns. It actually looked kind of interesting in the light of the kitchen window so I took some pictures.





My biggest pot held only the first eight or so chunks, but I thought it probably wouldn't take long to cook, and I'd be on to the second batch in no time. Wrong. Twenty minutes later it was just starting to get soft. About now I realized that this was going to take much longer than I'd anticipated. Back to the internet, where I found more instructions for cooking the pumpkin in the microwave. I hacked off another huge chunk and set the timer for the recommended seven minutes per pound. That would speed things up! Meanwhile I began sorting through the discarded pulp and picking out the seeds to roast for snacks.

The chunk in the microwave took twenty-one minutes to be soft enough to scrape off the rind. Disappointing, to say the least. But now I had a routine; fill the pot, put a chunk in the microwave, sort seeds while they cooked. When the first lot was done, I discovered the next joy: squeezing the water out of the cooked pulp. And let me tell you, it's a LOT of water. I had to go next door and borrow some cheesecloth from my mother and spend a lot of time mashing and squeezing the water out. Then I could finally get it into the freezer bags. By this time I had about two-thirds of the pumpkin hacked up. The counters, sink, floor, and most of me were covered with piles of discarded pulp, bits of stringy pumpkin flesh, pithy shards of rind, and slimy seeds.



At this point I called my mother. She suggested cooking the rest of the pumpkin in the oven to save time and effort. The remaining piece was too big to fit on any of my cookie sheets, so I wrapped it in tinfoil, set it on two cookie sheets placed side by side, and maneuvered it into the oven at 350 degrees for what my mother (and my internet sources) estimated would be about 30 minutes. I kept going with the rest of it in the pot and the microwave.

A full hour later, after much testing with a fork and despairing that it would ever be cooked, I pulled the last huge section out of the oven and unwrapped it. It was not done. I hacked it up into four smaller sections and finished them off in the microwave one at a time.



By this time I had used a large pot, three cookie sheets, two bowls, three plates, a colander, a masher, four knives, three spoons, two forks, and three lots of cheesecloth. It took me four and a half hours, and I have 20 cups of pureed pumpkin in the freezer. It had better be the tastiest pumpkin ever.



My advice for anyone planning to preserve some pumpkin:

1. Don't bother.

I'm ordering pizza for supper.