What to make with pumpkin guts? Make a pumpkin stock, of course. Perfect for flavouring and enhancing other pumpkin dishes. While you can use this stock as a base for risottos or braises, its best application is in my Creamy Hokkaido Pumpkin Soup.
Using this homemade stock instead of water or store-bought bouillon acts as a flavor multiplier. It reinforces the squash's savory, earthy notes, providing a depth of flavor that water cannot achieve.
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Why throw away something good? I don't know. I never do.
Whenever you make a dish with fresh pumpkin or even a simple pumpkin puree, you end up with lots of trim if you peel the pumpkin, and also with a load of pumpkin "guts".
Now, you can be wasteful and lazy and chuck it out, or you can be clever and resourceful and make something useful and delicious.
The best part is. It takes zero skill, very little time, and you end up with a healthy, natural flavour enhancer you can use instead of water in cooking.
Ingredients
There are many things you can use alongside pumpkin trim. Any vegetable scraps like carrot skins, onion skins, garlic trim, or celery tops are always plentiful in my kitchen.
The bare basics.
- Pumpkin trim and pumpkin guts.
- Onion or onion trim.
- Drinkable Water.
Instructions
The process is quick and straightforward, and requires almost no effort.
- Place pumpkin trim and guts, along with onion or other vegetable trimmings, into a suitably sized pot or saucepan.
- Cover the ingredients with water and bring them to a slow simmer. Keep slowly simmering it for 10 minutes.
- Remove it from the heat and let it cool down to room temperature without removing the solids.
- Once chilled, remove the solids by straining through a fine-mesh sieve.
- Your pumpkin stock is now ready to use, or you can store it airtight in the fridge for up to a week or freeze it for longer storage.
Variations
This pumpkin stock recipe is very basic and straightforward. You can use it in almost any savoury dish, and your taste buds will love you for it.
But what if we want to make something specific that requires a slightly different approach?
We simply modify as follows:
- Spice - Add warming spices such as cinnamon, star anise, ginger, and nutmeg.
- Sweet Stock - Maybe you want to poach some pears. Omit the onion, and you have a pure pumpkin base liquid that can be used for sweet or savoury preparations.
- Aromatics - If you want to use it in a Thai curry or soup, spice it up with chilli, lime leaves, lemongrass, galangal, or ginger. Maybe you want to make a saffron risotto or pumpkin saffron soup. Add some saffron to the stock.
- Protein trim - Add any meat trimmings if you want to use them in meaty dishes like stews or casseroles. You can either roast the meat trim before adding it to the pot for a deeper, more roasted flavour, or keep it unroasted for a more subtle flavour. Simmer for 1 hour when using meat trim and top up with water if it reduces too much.
How to use it
Now that you know how to cook pumpkin stock and how to modify the recipe to suit your needs, let's look at what you can cook with it.
- Soups - When making pumpkin soup or any other soup-like chanterelle mushroom soup, Ukrainian borscht, lentil soup, or even potato and leek soup. If you have the trim, make the stock and use it in whatever soup you want to make.
- Risotto - Making a risotto of any kind correctly requires you to use the correct liquid to cook it with. Water is not an option. It has no flavour. Use pumpkin stock to cook pumpkin risotto and other dishes.
- Couscous - The same as for risotto. It's much better and more intelligent to use a flavoured liquid for cooking couscous if you want to flavour the couscous with that same ingredient. It's double the flavour for basically the same effort and price.
- Stews - Add to casseroles or stews instead of water. If you are following a plant-based or vegan diet, then a simple pumpkin or butternut squash stock can work wonders by injecting flavour.
Frequently asked questions
Freeze for up to 1 year stored airtight in the freezer.
It can keep in the fridge for up to a week stored airtight.
Useful equipment for this recipe
Related recipes
If you like cooking responsibly and being resourceful, then you will find the following recipes useful.
- Lacto fermented cucumbers
- How to make koji and what to do with it
- Homemade sriracha hot sauce
- 8 Ways to cook broccoli
- Simple sauerkraut
More pumpkin recipes
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Recipe
Pumpkin Stock
Ingredients
- 400 g (3 ½ cups) Pumpkin trimmings and guts
- 1 (1) large onion or onion trim
- 2 (2) garlic cloves - optional
- 1000 g (4 ¼ cups) Water
Instructions
- Place pumpkin trim and guts, along with onion or other vegetable trimmings, into a suitably sized pot or saucepan.
- Cover the ingredients with water and bring them to a slow simmer. Keep slowly simmering it for 10 minutes.
- Remove it from the heat and let it cool down to room temperature without removing the solids.
- Once chilled, remove the solids by straining through a fine mesh sieve.
- Your pumpkin stock is now ready to use, or you can store it airtight in the fridge for up to a week, or freeze it for longer storage.
Notes
- Use pumpkin stock instead of plain water in any recipe to enhance the flavor. Think soups and stews.
- For a neutral or sweet flavor, use only pumpkin trim, guts, and water.
- Store in the fridge for up to 4 days.
- Freeze for up to 6 months.
Nutrition
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Joy Elliott says
Can this be pressure canned ?
Charlé Visser says
Sure thing. Just like puree or any other canned foods