Roasting a Whole Pumpkin

While visiting the Veggie Market a couple weeks back I passed the pumpkins and came across this beauty on special

 I have never actually cooked a pumpkin before as we generally prefer butternut squash, but I could not pass this up.
I have been reading some recipes online where people have cooked an entire pumpkin by putting it in the oven and I really wanted to try it. The method is so simple. Stab a few holes in the pumpkin, and place it in the oven at 180 degrees Celsius until a knife slides in easily. It took me just under 2 hours, but I had a big pumpkin so this will vary with size.

 Once cooled the skin peels of very easily. Then cut it up, remove the seeds and guts, and use the pumpkin as you would normally. I tried roasting the pumpkin seeds but nobody liked the hard chewiness of the outer shell of the seeds.

 I bagged the fresh into 500g parcels and stuck it in the deep freeze until I need it. I came out with 4.5kg of pumpkin flesh

 But that’s not all! I also threw all the guts into a colander and swished it around unto all that was left was a few seeds and strings (bottom right of the picture below). What I got from that was 2 and a half cups of “gut pulp” (bottom left of the picture below). It was like soft pumpkin puree or baby food..

 So I turned it into this:

A delicious crust-less pumpkin pie using this carrot pie recipe.