A few years ago, I did a post about a pumpkin experiment I did, using four different varieties of pumpkin. I cooked each one, skinned and pureed them and then baked some bread with each kind to see if there was a notable difference in flavor. There was quite a difference and I was fascinated to find that there are over 50 varieties of pumpkin out there!
So, this year I am doing it again! I chose the "winner" from the last experiment to compete against a few new challengers.
First of all, finding different types of pumpkins in our small town is not that easy. I had to go about an hour away to find anything other than carving or pie pumpkins for the last try. This time I stopped at a local home decor and nursery because I knew they had a "pumpkin patch." They actually just have a path with piles of pumpkins in it and a hay bale maze, but it works for our community. To my surprise and delight, they had 12 varieties of pumpkin! Looks like I'll be able to repeat this experiment at least one more time without traveling a great distance.
The pumpkins I chose this time are (from top to bottom): One Too Many, Speckled Hound, Cheddar (winner from last time), and Enchanted. My kids also picked up some pie pumpkins which I will talk about but that I did not use to make bread with.
We start with the One Too Many. This pumpkin is quite funny looking! It is white with both orange and green veins running down and over it. We got one that was a bit lopsided, but they aren't all that way.
One thing I wish I had done before I started was to weigh each pumpkin. Last time I measured how much the yield was, but without any reference to the beginning weight. This time, I did not measure either weight or yield (although, if I go look in my freezer, I can probably figure out the yield.
The inside of the One Too Many was pretty surprising! It has white flesh with a slight green tinge near the skin. It had very spongy, dry pulp but the flesh began to sweat immediately after cutting. I thought it smelled a bit like cucumber, but my daughters thought it was more like honeydew melon. There was a lot of pulp and the seeds were very large and white. I thought they made the best tasting toasted seeds (yup! I didn't burn the seeds this year like last time!).
The girls helped me seed all of the other pumpkins, but I did this one myself. The seeds came out of the pulp pretty easily, possibly because it was so dry.
I also wrote in my notes that the inside was tough but the skin was pretty easy to cut. That is pretty important as I am getting older and cutting things like pumpkins and watermelons gets harder every year. I remember in my notes from the last experiment that one of the pumpkins was so hard to cut that I planned to use a hatchet the next time. I expect that I'll just not use that kind again.
I will also say that the day after this experiment, my right arm ached all day and night and into the second day. I lift weights every week, so this is pretty significant to have that kind of muscle ache. Pumpkins are no joke!
The cut pieces all fit on my large bar pan and baked up rather dry. I probably could have put them in for less time. I baked them at 350 for just under an hour. The pieces were less than 1 in thick.
The baked pumpkin had a very different smell than the raw. It was much more like sweet pipe tobacco. There was not a lot of puree and the flesh was not hard to remove from the skin. It was easy to puree because most of the water remained in the pumpkin. The puree was a green color and very sweet.
The second pumpkin we did was the Speckled Hound. It was a dark grey-green with speckles up and down it's seems. It was a smaller pumpkin but weighed more than the One Too Many.
You can't tell here but will see in the next photo that while it may seem round, it is really one of the squeezed looking kinds.
It was not too hard to cut, but not super easy, either.
The Speckled Hound had a light orange center and its pulp was also a bit dry, although more stringy than the One Too Many. The seeds were very small, round, and very dark. The flesh had a green right around it, as well, which makes me wonder if that indicates a lack of ripeness like with a banana.
The flesh smelled a little grassy but more pumpkin-like than the One Too Many.There was also an odd hollow part in the very center.
The Hound was very loud while cooking- it kind of sizzled in the oven. There was not a lot of water, but more than the first one and the flesh became more yellow after baking. It was very easy to remove from the skin and easy to puree, where it changed colors again to a dark orange. It smelled more tart and more pumpkin-like than the One Too Many.
I baked it at the same temp for exactly an hour.
This is not a great picture of the Enchanted pumpkin. It is very white and was the largest and heaviest of the pumpkins we used this time. If you remember last time, the larges was rather light due to it being so hollow. Not so with the Enchanted. It had very little inside and tons of flesh. It was rather hard to cut and had a stringy center. The seeds were large, dark, and fat. They were my second favorite once toasted. This one also had a green tinge and began to sweet as soon as I cut it.
You can see that the Enchanted pumpkin is also rather squashed (pun intended). It has a very deep dent in the bottom which makes the flesh grow thick in the center area.
The flesh smelled like the mountains to me, like a fresh breeze and not very much like pumpkin.
If you look at the sliced below, you will see how the flesh did not grow symmetrically at all. I ended up cutting each U down the center before cooking. This one took up the large bar pan and 2 smaller cookie sheets to get in the over and baked for an hour and fifteen minutes.
The baked pieces smelled very sweet and were very easy to remove from the skin.
At first there seemed to be a medium amount of water when baked. But after removing the skin, there was a lot of water along with the flesh in the bowl. I had to keep pouring it out and I used a slotted spoon to more the flesh into the food processor. There was also so much puree that my processor needed a rest before moving on to the next pumpkin! It began to over heat. It did puree quickly, though and was tasty.
The next pumpkin we used was the Cheese or Cheddar pumpkin. This was the winner from the last experiment. By "winner" I mean that the bread I made from it got the most votes and that I liked its qualities over all more than the other pumpkins. I read over my last blog post before beginning this year's experiment and thought I read that the Cheese was easy to cut. This one was not so easy as I remembered, but not as hard as the Enchanted. It had all the other qualities as last time: stringy inside almost like shredded cheese, dark flesh, seed that looked traced, etc. It baked in just over an hour and was not as easy to remove from the skin as I noted last time, either. Perhaps this one was less ripe or perhaps I could have baked it longer. The puree was quite nice, though.
The last set of pumpkins that we did were the pie pumpkins. I have never actually worked with a pie pumpkin before and I was not impressed. Hard to cut, very dry when baked, not much yield, hard to gut and hard to remove from the skin, and not as sweet as the others. Very difficult to puree due to the dryness. It is said that these pumpkins make the best pies because of that dryness, but I'm not sure the extra work is worth a little more firmness in a pie. The baked pieces smelled a bit like popcorn, kind of buttery.
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| These were the seeds in order from Left to Right: One Too Many, Speckled Hound, Enchanted, Cheese, and Pie. |
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| You can see the different colors and consistency of each puree, not to mention the amount! Note that the one with the least puree has the most seeds. |
We measured them all our in batches of about two cups. I say "about" because my husband would scoop less than a full cup in order not to get any on his hands and then try to compensate by adding a smaller amount. When I baked with two of these (he left the other two bowls with some inside), I discovered that after removing one cup from 2 bags, one bag was left with less than one cup and the other was left with much more than one cup! So, the yield is hard to say. When I bake in future, I'll be sure to measure what I take out rather than just dumping a bag in and calling it 2 cups.
And, of course, the real test! I made a half batch of muffins with each puree. This recipe called for mixing up all the ingredients except the pumpkin and then adding it last, which was very convenient for such an experiment. I made one single large batch, split it in exactly 4 parts, and then added the different purees. I took the muffins with me to a school field trip and used the 12 children, 1 teacher and 2 moms as voters. I then used 5 teenagers and one admin from school to eat the rest and got a good tally! Best smell was Enchanted (11 votes). Best taste was also the Enchanted (9 votes).
I melted a stick of butter, tossed the raw seeds in it, sprinkled with salt and baked at 350 for 35 min. I say, "I" but it was really my dear husband who finished off the work for me.
See! There he is measuring our the puree for me! Last time I did this experiment, I began baking around 11am and finished after midnight (including the bread). This times I began the project at about 9am but had to take a break to get my youngest to Learning Lab for a couple of hours around lunch. I finished baking the muffins at about 8:30 and my hubs had the kitchen clean before bedtime! And now we have enough pumpkin to last us at least 2 years.
