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The Wall Street Journal has an article on pumpkin pie's dirty secret, that canned pumpkin pie puree is from the Dickinson pumpkin, which some people do not consider a true pumpkin, though it is a member of the squash family.
As many of us have learned, making pumpkin puree from scratch is a lot of work that sometimes produces less than fantastic pies.
This article might be behind their paywall:
WSJ article on pumpkin pieThe key to making pumpkin pies from scratch is to start with the right pumpkin. I've used sugar (pie) pumpkins for years. The "peanut pumpkin" (origin France) has particularly nice texture, as does the blue/grey Jarrahdale pumpkin (origin in Australia). I like a nice thick, non-stringy puree. Some pumpkin varieties taste better than others. I did not like the white Lumina. The Cinderella had far too much water to make it worth the trouble, given how little puree was produced after extensive draining.
I cut the pumpkin in half vertically (a sawing knife helps) and scoop out the seeds with a grapefruit spoon. I roast the pumpkin in a Calphalon roaster, cut side down, at 325F for at least an hour or until flesh softens. With some varieties, water may accumulate in the pan; just pour it off. I turn the sliced halves over and let them cool briefly--until I can handle them. I scoop out the flesh and make puree in my Cuisinart food processor.
I've done five pumpkins so far, and I have five more to do. I'll be roasting two of the pie pumpkins tomorrow.
Note: I also could not read the article because of the paywall.
The two sugar pumpkins that I now have roasting were very difficult to cut open for some reason, even with my Kuhn-Rikon sawtooth pumpkin knife if was quite a struggle. I resorted to sticking a butter knife in where I'd started cutting to create a wedge, but it was hard going. At that moment, a can opener and a can of pumpkin looked appealing....
Jack-o-lantern pumpkins make very thin puree, and as Skeptic notes, do not have much taste. My mom used to cook them--even roast them--when she got a good deal at the end of Halloween (free). It's a wonder any of us still like pumpkin.
Well, the joke (?!) is on me. What the pumpkin producer at the farmers' market sold me back in October are NOT pie pumpkins. They seem to be a small variety of the jack-o-lantern type pumpkin. The first clue was the extremely hard-to-cut through skin. The second was when that skin was still hard after an hour, an hour and a half, and two hours of roasting. The third clue, when I took them out after the two-hour mark, is that the hard shells separated almost completely intact from the puree, which I was able to cut into chunks. There was no caramelization, so these two are definitely not sugar pumpkins.
They won't have much taste. I don't want to use them in baking. I'm not ready to make pumpkin/black bean/tomato soup again, where the pumpkin is just an element without much taste, and what taste it has is not tasty. I have thrown it away.
I have another three small pumpkins. I'm pretty sure one is a sugar pumpkin, so I may go ahead and bake it for my rolls. I'm not sure that I want to deal with the other two today.
I think that these vendors grow the pumpkin as a side project. From talking with them, I gather that the wife does not cook or bake with them. I may have to stick with peanut pumpkins and the blue-green ones and look elsewhere for my pie pumpkins.
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