Canned pumpkin is a tried-and-true, time-saving kitchen hack for soups, sauces, and seasonal baked gadgets. Fairly than hauling your pumpkin or squash home, discovering your biggest knife to slice it, roasting it throughout the oven over a protracted time interval, then dragging out your blender to purée it until clear, it’s possible you’ll merely attain for a helpful can or two in your pantry. Nevertheless there’s a trigger home cooks typically resolve to undertake all that information labor listed above — roasted pumpkin has a deeper, richer style that pumpkin straight out of a can can not replicate. Or can it?
Using canned pumpkin shouldn’t be a mistake, nevertheless using it straight from the can positively is. Although it’s possible you’ll luckily skip the pumpkin shopping for, slicing, and mixing, roasting your canned pumpkin purée will reincorporate these buttery, toasted caramelized flavors that solely heat can current. That heat has one different revenue: eradicating just a few of the canned pumpkin’s moisture. Notably for a straightforward pumpkin pie, the place a can of purée usually creates further filling than you need and in addition you are already working interference to cease a soggy crust, a less-moist purée helps create a creamier, custard-like texture.
To bake your canned pumpkin to perfection, unfold out as numerous your canned purée as a result of the recipe requires immediately on a baking sheet (the dearth of moisture shouldn’t be ample to require further purée). Roast at 400°F for about quarter-hour, or until the perimeters and peaks of your pumpkin purée start to brown. Let the purée cool barely sooner than using.
Further concepts and strategies when using canned pumpkin puréeGala Oleksenko/Shutterstock
Many recipes that call for canned pumpkin moreover incorporate just some flavorful spices, which help take the sting off of that raw pumpkin style. After roasting and cooling your pumpkin purée, it’s possible you’ll add it to your recipe as common. Nevertheless, within the an identical method you’d spice and trigger a nut, meat, or vegetable sooner than roasting, it is usually helpful in order so as to add your pumpkin pie spice seasonings to your layer of purée sooner than roasting. By together with the sugar and spices you need on to the pumpkin sooner than baking, you might be infusing your purée with style. The result is a refined, balanced, buttery richness that may help your pumpkin desserts standout from the additional customary seasonal fare.
Within the occasion you are cooking for a crowd or can not match yet one more baking sheet into your crowded oven, there’s a number of method in order so as to add heat. Cooking your canned pumpkin purée in a skillet on the stovetop, along with its sugars and spices, may help put together dinner off that raw squash style, in the reduction of moisture, and heighten the additional nuanced flavors current in pumpkins. Try it out in your subsequent pie or pumpkin loaf to see for many who can model the excellence.
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