What to make with pumpkin guts? Make a pumpkin stock of course. Perfect for flavouring and enhancing other pumpkin dishes to brighten up the flavour of autumn. Think pumpkin soup, risotto and stews made with pumpkin stock instead of plain water. So much better and you are being resourceful in not wasting any pumpkin trimmings.
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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 needed
There are many things you can use along with side pumpkin trim. Any vegetable scraps like carrot skins, onion skins, garlic trim or celery tops are always plentiful in my kitchen.
Let's use the bare basics.
- Pumpkin trim and pumpkin guts
- Onion or onion trim
- Drinkable Water
How to make it
The process is quick and straight forward, 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 it 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 for longer storage.
Variations
This pumpkin stock recipe is very basic and straight forward. You can use it in almost any savoury dish and your tastebuds 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 some warming spices like 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 for a Thai curry or soup then spice it up with chilli, lime leaf, 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 it in meaty dishes like stews or casseroles. You can either roast the meat trim before adding to the pot for a deeper 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 a pumpkin risotto and so forth.
- 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.
- Pasta - Instead of boiling your pasta in plain salted water, boil in pumpkin stock and season it as you would normally.
- 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 with injecting flavour.
- Porridge - You can make savoury or sweet porridge and use it to make porridge instead of with milk or water. Pumpkin millet porridge is my favourite and it's also delicious with some added pumpkin puree and a roasted pumpkin pieces.
- Bread - Instead of using plain water for sourdough, baguette, dark rye bread, or flax bread use pumpkin stock instead. You can add garlic and extra onion to the stock if using for bread. Bread really love those garlicky onion notes.
Other recipes you might like
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
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
Other 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 sauce pan.
- Cover the ingredients with water and bring it 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 for longer storage.
Notes
- Use pumpkin stock instead of plain water in any recipe to enhance the flavour. Think soups and stews.
- For a neutral or sweet flavour use only pumpkin trim, guts and water.
- Store in the fridge for up to 4 days.
- Freeze for up to 6 months.
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