Manly Men Like Pumpkin Butter… even though it sounds like something little Mary would serve at her make believe tea party…

The time of year is upon us for some pretty cool seasonal food. I grew a few things this summer, and it always kind of sucks to have to wait for the fall stuff until… well… fall. I did well with buttercup squash and pumpkins. I only planted one pumpkin plant, and it only grew 4 pumpkins, but I think I’m set on pumpkin for awhile…

.

.

.

A beagle and her pumpkins
Our old beagle has a spot in every room that she calls her own. In this room, pumpkins invaded her space. She was pissed.

.

.

.

Now, I like pumpkin pie as much as the next dude.  Three of the four pumpkins we grew are in the picture above.  The two that are a darker orange color weigh over 100# each.  The lighter-orange pumpkin weighs slightly over 80#, and one more pumpkin not pictured weighed in at over 40#.  That’s over 320# of pumpkin… how much pie can a fellow eat?!?  Although one or two of these may end up wasted as jack-o-lanterns, this is way too much food to not find some different ways to eat pumpkin.  Deciding to try out the smallest (40#!) pumpkin first, I decided on a pumpkin soup and some pumpkin butter.  The pumpkin soup was okay, but the butter rocked, so I thought I would share my recipe and experience.

The first thing we did was to split the pumpkin, gut it, and bake it.

.

.

.

40# pumpkin
Don't throw them seeds away! Clean 'em, soak them in salt water overnight, and roast them in the oven at 300 degrees or so for a couple of hours. Awesome snackin'!

.

.

.

I cut a bit of it off raw to make the pumpkin soup, but the rest of it went in the over at 350° for about an hour.  Remember, this was a BIG pumpkin… I had to do 2 shifts to cook the entire thing.  I made the pumpkin soup while the pumpkin baked 🙂

.

.

.

Baked pumpkin
The whole house smelled like Thanksgiving... in early October. It was awesome 🙂

.
.
.

Once it was nice and soft, I removed it carefully from the oven and drained of the juices (there were a ton of juice cooked out of this sucker).  Then, I got out a knife to start removing the flesh from the shell.  Of course, being a dude, I like my knives big and sharp.

.

.

.

Big knife
Big knives mean you get 'er done quicker, right?

.

.

.

The big knife was, of course, a mistake.  Almost every time I get together with a knife in the kitchen, someone gets cut.  And seeing as how no one will enter the kitchen if I am holding a knife, it’s always me.

.

.

.

Stupid knife
I always seem to cut little bits from the exact same place on my finger... every time. One of these times, it's just going to refuse to grow back.

.

.

.

So, with my finger hurting, I soldier on and remove the pumpkin flesh.  It all goes into a bowl and I mash it up.  Now, as you can imagine, I got me a ton of pumpkin meat… way more than I’m going to need to make a little bit of pumpkin butter.  The nice thing about pumpkin is it freezes really well.  So, I decide I’m going to make about 8 cups of pumpkin puree into pumpkin butter, so I blended and set aside 8 cups.

.

.

.

Pumpkin puree
I decided to use 8 cups because... uh... that's the biggest measuring thingie I had.

.

.

.

I freeze the rest of the flesh just mashed.

.

.

.

Mashed pumpkin
Nothing quite as appetizing as mashed pumpkin...

.

.

.

I froze it mashed instead of pureed in case I came across a recipe where the pumpkin needed to have a little more substance… but I’m guessing it’s mostly going to go in soup, more butter, and some pies.  But, it’s easy enough to blend it after it thaws.

To freeze it, I just filled quart freezer bags with 4 cups of mash.

.

.

.

Uh... Yeah... More pumpkin
Yummy... er... well, someday it will be.

.

.

.

A neat way to get the air out is to stick a straw into the bag and suck as you seal it up.

.

.

.

Pumpkin shake
Nothing like having your teenage son walk into the kitchen, spy you sucking on a bag of pumpkin, roll his eyes, and, without saying a word, turn right back around and leave.

.

.

.

Okay, I’m getting close to ending the freezing of the pumpkin.  Of course, my hands are all slimed up with pumpkin.  I wash my hands and realize…

.

.

.

Uh oh
Uh... this doesn't look right...

.

.

.

… something is missing.  I know I had a bandage on my freshly cut finger.  I know it hasn’t been off that finger for very long.  I know I didn’t have it when I went to wash my hands.  For crying out loud, where could it be?

.

.

.

Uh... Yeah... More pumpkin
... oh yeah...

.

.

.

Oh no.  I had a pretty strong suspicion I knew where the bandage was.  See, the masher did a decent job of mashing the pumpkins, but every once in awhile, there was a piece the masher didn’t get.  I’d just stick my hand in that goop and mush it with my hands.  So, I went “fishing”.

.

.

.

Fishing
Yeah, it feels as creepy as it looks.

.

.

.

It didn’t take long until I found what I was looking for.

.

.

.

The big catch
Strangely enough, I didn't end up reusing the bandage.

.

.

.

Yeah, I just tossed it… the bandage, that is.  I’m not going to waste good pumpkin.  I just marked the package extra special so I knew which one not to eat myself.

.

.

.

Special batch
That one's going into pumpkin bread to give away during the holidays 🙂

.

.

.

Finally, I finished getting all of the extra pumpkin and was ready to start in on the pumpkin butter.

Following is what you will need to make a batch of pumpkin butter.  I actually made a double batch.  However, I went the slow cooker route to cook the butter (cause there is no stirring or watching or any of that crap) and I quickly realized that my concoction was a little much for a standard slow cooker.

.

.

.

Full
Yeah... little full...

.

.

.

It was a little messy.  If you want to double the recipe, do so at your own risk 🙂

* 4 cups pumpkin puree

* 1 cup brown sugar

* 1/2 cup white sugar

* 3/4 cup apple juice

* 1 Tbs vanilla

* 1/4 tsp allspice

* 1/4 tsp ground cloves

* 1/4 tsp ground ginger

* 1/2 tsp nutmeg

* 1 1/2 tsp cinnamon

* 1 Tbs lime juice

That’s it.  Mix it all together and throw it in the slow cooker.  I cooked the double batch for about 12 hours overnight on high in the slow cooker.  A smaller batch probably won’t take quite as long.  Make sure you tilt the lid on the cooker so that a lot of the the moisture cooks off.

.

.

.

Full lid
Tilt it, or crack it. I wrote "crack"... hahaha!

.

.

.

You want your pumpkin butter to be nice and thick… you know, so that sticks to the back of a spoon.  You want it spreadable.  I love that word: spreadable. Sounds kind of sexy, doesn’t it?  Sweet and spreadable.

While I’m getting prepared to cook this overnight, the wife says to me, “Uh, that slow cooker looks a little full,”

“Yeah,” I say, “I want lots of butter.”

“You realize that is going to make a mess, right,” the wife says.

“Don’t worry,” I say.  “I’ll clean it up.”

Well, you see, I have this little habit of saying I’ll clean stuff up and then, for some reason, I never really clean it up.  Or rather, I don’t clean it up fast enough for the wife and she ends up cleaning it up herself.  Long story short, the wife doesn’t let me cook my pumpkin butter in the kitchen.  I am relegated to complete my cooking project in the basement.

.

.

.

My cooking space... apparently...
For some reason, seems like a lot of my cooking projects end up here...

.

.

.

After about 12 hours, my slow cooker full of goodness…

.

.

.

Full
This is going to be SO much pumpkin butter!

.

.

.

…had reduced to the perfect consistency.  Too bad so much of it was water.

.

.

.

Messy much?
Okay... so it was a little messy.

.

.

.

All that work and I get a couple of jars of pumpkin butter.

.

.

.

Pumpkin butter
Not much... but it sure is good.

.

.

.

I was trying to decide if I wanted to process the butter by canning to make it last longer (which isn’t apparently recommended), but I decided that it wasn’t going to take long for the family to go through what I had made.  I stuck one jar in the fridge for now and one jar in the freezer for later.  The hardest part was preparing the pumpkin.  The rest was a cake walk.  It sure is good… and I have the reassurance that if I want to make more, I’ve got plenty of pumpkin to make that happen.

.

.

.

I can always make more...
How much pumpkin butter can one family eat?

.

.

.

Now, I just need to figure out what I am going to do with my squash…

.

.

.

Squash
Besides baking it, what do you do with this crap...?

3 thoughts on “Manly Men Like Pumpkin Butter… even though it sounds like something little Mary would serve at her make believe tea party…”

  1. glad you found the bandage did the cut heal fast if so you have discovered a medical marvel. we have a new 20by30 ft space to put in a gate

  2. Awesome. Ill just remember not to eat the pumpkin bread. Come to think of it, I saw a hand drain augering tool in your basement “kitchen”. Maybe Ill skip on that batch of butter too.

  3. C’mon, Lee. It’s not like I used the auger to stir the butter or anything… at least not more than once…

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.