Pumpkin recipes
These pumpkin recipes run from savoury to sweet, with dishes from around the world: a velvety French soup, Italian pasta and risotto, Brazilian prawns served in a whole baked pumpkin, and desserts from Turkey, Mexico and Thailand that candy pumpkin in syrup or steam it with a custard inside. Butternut squash and kabocha are here too.
Pumpkin pie is the American Thanksgiving dessert, a spiced custard of pumpkin purée, evaporated milk and eggs in a flaky crust, and ginataang gulay simmers squash and green beans in coconut milk for an everyday Filipino dinner. Every recipe gives exact amounts, scales to the number of people eating and sends what you still need to a shared shopping list.
17 recipes
Pumpkin Soup🇫🇷 French recipes · Lunch · 1 h 5 min
Pumpkin Pie🇺🇸 American recipes · Dessert · 4 h 30 min
Butternut Squash Risotto🇮🇹 Italian recipes · Dinner · 1 h
Pumpkin Pasta🇮🇹 Italian recipes · Dinner · 1 h 5 min
Pumpkin Bread🇺🇸 American recipes · Snack · 3 h 30 min
Roasted Pumpkin with Feta🌍 Mediterranean recipes · Side dish · 50 min
Camarão na Moranga🇧🇷 Brazilian recipes · Dinner · 2 h 10 min
Pumpkin Spice Latte🇺🇸 American recipes · Drink · 15 min
Sangkaya Fak Thong🇹🇭 Thai recipes · Dessert · 4 h 45 min
Kabocha no Nimono🇯🇵 Japanese recipes · Side dish · 1 h 10 min
Calabaza en Tacha🇲🇽 Mexican recipes · Dessert · 2 h 40 min
Kabak Tatlısı🇹🇷 Turkish recipes · Dessert · 10 h 15 min
Tykvennaya Kasha🌍 Eastern European recipes · Breakfast · 1 h 10 min
Ginataang Gulay🇵🇭 Filipino recipes · Dinner · 45 min
Picarones🌎 Latin American recipes · Dessert · 3 h 10 min
Sopaipillas🌎 Latin American recipes · Snack · 1 h 20 min
Locro🌎 Latin American recipes · Dinner · 12 h
Choosing a pumpkin for cooking
The recipes here keep returning to one warning: the big carving pumpkins sold for Halloween are watery and stringy. They cook down into a thin, bland soup or sauce, give off too much juice to candy, and their thin walls can split under the weight of a filling.
Look instead for dense, deep orange flesh. The recipes name Crown Prince, Hokkaido, Delica, kabocha, the Mexican calabaza de Castilla and butternut squash. Roasted pumpkin with feta keeps the skin on: butternut, kabocha and red kuri skins soften enough to eat, but with a thick-skinned pumpkin you eat the flesh and leave the skin. Kabocha no nimono leaves patches of skin in place to hold each piece together as it simmers.
Savoury pumpkin: soup, pasta and risotto
Several savoury dishes use the pumpkin itself as the thickener. Pumpkin pasta has no cream: half the pumpkin is crushed into a rough sauce and made creamy with starchy pasta water and Parmesan. Camarão na moranga thickens its prawn sauce with flesh scraped from inside the pumpkin it is served in, and in ginataang gulay and locro the squash or pumpkin breaks down and thickens the pot.
Pumpkin soup adds one floury potato for body instead of flour and keeps the onion and leek pale, so the soup does not turn a muddy colour. Butternut squash risotto uses its squash two ways: diced small, it melts into the rice and turns it orange, while larger cubes are roasted for the top.
Sweet pumpkin, from candied wedges to steamed custard
Kabak tatlısı, the Turkish autumn dessert, layers peeled pumpkin with sugar overnight, so the juice drawn out is the only liquid it cooks in; it is served cool with tahini and crushed walnuts. Calabaza en tacha, made in Mexico for Día de Muertos, simmers skin-on wedges in piloncillo syrup with cinnamon, cloves and orange, basted rather than stirred so they stay whole.
Sangkaya fak thong steams a custard of eggs, coconut cream and palm sugar inside a whole kabocha, then cools for at least three hours so it cuts into clean wedges. Pumpkin bread is made with oil rather than butter, so the crumb stays moist for days; wrapped, it keeps for four, and its spices taste stronger on the second.
Frequently asked questions
- What can I make with pumpkin besides pie?
- Pumpkin works in savoury dishes as well as sweet ones. Pumpkin soup makes a lunch, pumpkin pasta and butternut squash risotto a dinner, roasted pumpkin with feta a side, and ginataang gulay simmers squash in coconut milk. On the sweet side there are kabak tatlısı, calabaza en tacha, pumpkin bread and a pumpkin spice latte made with real purée, and tykvennaya kasha turns pumpkin and millet into a breakfast porridge.
- Can you cook with a carving pumpkin?
- Not for these recipes. The large pumpkins sold for carving at Halloween are watery and stringy: they make a thin, bland soup or pasta sauce, and they give off too much juice to candy and turn mushy instead. Choose a dense pumpkin with deep orange flesh, such as Crown Prince, Hokkaido, Delica or kabocha, or a butternut squash.
- Can I use butternut squash instead of pumpkin?
- Yes, in many of these recipes. Pumpkin soup, pumpkin pasta, kabak tatlısı and tykvennaya kasha all name butternut squash as an alternative, and roasted pumpkin with feta works with butternut, kabocha or red kuri in the same time. It works the other way round too: butternut squash risotto can be made just as well with a dense, sweet pumpkin such as Delica or Hokkaido.
- Is pumpkin purée the same as pumpkin pie filling?
- No. Pumpkin pie filling is sold already sweetened and spiced, while the pumpkin pie and pumpkin bread here both call for plain pumpkin purée, because they add their own sugar and their own cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg and cloves. Homemade purée from roasted pumpkin works in the bread if it is as thick as tinned; cook a watery one down first, or the loaf turns heavy and damp.
- Can you make pumpkin pie ahead of time?
- Yes, and the recipe suggests it. Bake pumpkin pie a day ahead, let it cool completely on a rack, which takes about two hours, then keep it in the fridge, since it slices better cold. Take it out of the oven while the centre still has a slight wobble, because an overbaked pumpkin pie cracks.