Trader Joes was giving out free pumpkins after halloween so I obviously took one even though I have never cooked one before. I wanted to take advantage of the entire pumpkin so I googled “stew in pumpkin.” This soup is based on a recipe from www.allrecipes.com. I left out ingredients that I didn’t have and made a few other changes. It was really tasty and a complete meal in 1 pumpkin!
Stew in a Pumpkin
Servings
4 Servings
Ingredients
- 1/2 pound beef stew
- 2 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 potatoes cut small
- 1 onion chopped
- 1 parsnip peeled and chopped
- 1 green pepper cut
- 3 carrots sliced
- 2 cups water
- 4 cloves minced garlic
- Salt and pepper
- 1 whole pumpkin
- Cumin
Instructions
- Heat olive oil in pot, add beef and brown evenly.
- Add all vegetables, water, and salt and pepper. Bring to a boil. Let simmer 30 minutes. Add cumin.
- Preheat oven to 325.
- Cut off top of pumpkin, remove seeds, place soup in pumpkin, place pumpkin in a dish and bake in oven for 2 hours.
- Bowl out the soup and scrape the pulp from the pumpkin into the stew
I made this for dinner the other night, with a loaf (ok two loaves) of crusty bread. Everyone raved about it. The normally picky teenagers licked the bowl and asked for more, the husband asked me to work it into the regular supper repertoire, and the whole family was disappointed that there were no leftovers for the next day! (I doubled the recipe for my family of 6, I should have tripled it!)
I couldn’t find a pumpkin, so I used canned pumpkin instead, and it gave the stew a great color and excellent body!