Love carving pumpkins, hate wasting food?

There is nothing more exciting than carving your own pumpkins. Kids and adults alike get thoroughly stuck into transforming a humble vegetable into something magical and sometime pretty terrifying! But if, like me, you hate to see all the gorgeous orange flesh going to waste, there IS a way to have your pumpkin and eat it!

The trick (and the treat) is all about how you get the innards out. Once we have scooped out all the seeds we use a crook knife (used for spoon carving) to scrape out all the good flesh in lovely long ribbons. This can then be used for one of these tasty recipes:

Roasted pumpkin, chilli and coconut soup

Sauté some finely chopped onions, garlic and red chillies in a little oil or butter in the Dutch oven until just starting to caramelise. Then add the pumpkin ribbons and just enough vegetable stock to cover them and simmer gently (campfire setting = one log!) until tender. Then add a tin of coconut milk and cook for another 15-20 mins until all the lovely flavours are blended. If you are cooking indoors, you can at this point blend the soup until smooth. But we just like to bash up the lumps with a wooden spoon before serving up in an enamel mug as a delicious, warming treat around the fire.

Pumpkin and chickpea burgers

Gently steam the pumpkin ribbons until tender then crush with a spoon or a potato masher until well broken up but not pureed. Add in a finely chopped onion, lots of fresh herbs, a can of drained chickpeas and a good grind of salt and pepper. If the mix is too wet, you can add in some flour at this stage too. Form the mixture into patties before frying off on the hot plate or griddle over the fire.

Spicy pumpkin seeds

And last but not least, don’t forget that you can also eat the seeds. Pick off all the stringy bits, then throw them all into the Dutch oven with lots of olive oil, salt, pepper, paprika, smoked chipotle chilli flakes and a sprinkling of sugar (makes all the difference!). Cook them over the campfire on a gentle heat stirring from time to time to ensure they don’t stick. Let them cool before tucking in, preferably with a cold beer (Beware! They are very moreish!).

These are just a few of our favourites…what are your top pumpkin recipes?