"Orange watermelon" - as some call it a pumpkin, which causes us a contradictory reaction. Someone uses it because they really love it (Americans have no equal in this regard), someone just because it is useful, but someone completely excludes it from their diet, motivating the refusal to tasteless and fresh vegetables. But in vain! There are many ways to enrich a pumpkin dish. For example, bake it in the oven. Why bake it? Yes, because this is perhaps the most successful option for preparing a useful "giant."
Baked pumpkin in the oven - general principles and methods of preparation
Pumpkin is a valuable product in its composition and culinary properties. The dishes that are baked in the oven can be used to make a wide variety of dishes from this gigantic vegetable: for example, bake the pulp with the addition of honey, pumpkin casseroles — sweet or savory, open cakes, and much more — turn out to be very tasty and interesting. However, in most cases, they still prefer to stuff the pumpkin, and then bake in the oven along with the filling.
Agree, an interesting dish turns out in the end. Delicious filling, surrounded by a delicious pumpkin "pot", covered on top with an original lid, which can later also be eaten. The peel of a baked pumpkin is very easy to remove, and the flesh during baking absorbs all the smells of adjacent ingredients (or fillings), giving it an unusual taste and aroma.
Oven baked pumpkin - preparation of products
So, as we have already found out, you can bake a pumpkin whole without removing the skin and pulp around it, or in slices, previously peeling it from the skin and seeds. If the pumpkin is young (its weight is up to 5-7 kilograms), then it is quite easily cleaned with a kitchen knife or a peeler. But if the vegetable lies for a long time or has huge dimensions - the peel becomes dense and stiff. To remove such a "shell" from the pulp is almost impossible. In this case, it is recommended that you first hold the pumpkin in a heated oven until the pulp is soft, and then remove the skin and act according to the recipe.
What to do with stuffed pumpkin? And there is nothing complicated. In order for the vegetable to be properly prepared, it is necessary to cut the top of the pumpkin (make a lid) or cut it in half, remove the seed core with a large spoon and fill it with the prepared filling.
Baked pumpkin in the oven - the best recipes
Recipe 1: Cottage Cheese Casserole with Pumpkin in the Oven
Such a casserole will surely appeal to your growing child. As you know, cottage cheese is one of the most valuable foods, but few children like to use it in its pure form. Cottage cheese casserole in this case is the best option to enrich the growing body with the necessary calcium. A pumpkin filling will add juiciness to the dish. And tasty, and satisfying, and healthy!
Ingredients:
- one kilogram of cottage cheese
- three chicken eggs
- flour 4 table. spoons
- vanilla sugar 6 teaspoons
- a little soda
- 300-400 gr. pumpkins
- 100 gr. Sahara
- a handful of breadcrumbs
- one yolk
Cooking method:
1. Rub the cottage cheese through a sieve, carefully so that there are no grains left, add vanilla sugar, three eggs and soda. Mix. Pour the necessary amount of flour and start a sparse curd dough.
2. To prepare the filling, pumpkin pulp is passed through a meat grinder and mixed with sugar. Next, grease the form with butter, cover the bottom evenly with breadcrumbs.
3. Divide the curd mass into two equal parts. The first part is distributed along the bottom of the form. Then we spread the filling from the pumpkin and cover with the remaining curd mass. Grease the casserole with whipped yolk.
4. We send to the hot oven (up to 180 C) and bake for twenty to twenty five minutes. When the casserole is lightly browned, we take it out, cool it and serve it with fresh sour cream or whipped cream.
Recipe 2: Pumpkin Baked in the Oven with Cheese
Pumpkin with cheese is a rather interesting combination, which is worth a try. For juiciness, add cream to the dish, which we will pour directly into the pumpkin cavity, and ingredients such as pepper and nutmeg will give an additional spicy flavor to the dish.
Ingredients:
- medium sized pumpkin
- 500 gr. cheese (better than hard)
- one liter of heavy cream
- about 50 gr. butter
- pepper, nutmeg to taste
- salt and a little sugar (a small pinch to soften the taste)
Cooking method:
1. From the pumpkin we extract the seeds, cutting off the lid from it. Grate the cheese on a coarse grater and put it in the pumpkin cavity. Pour the cream there so that about five centimeters remain to the top.
2. Mix the “stuffing” with sugar, salt, ground pepper, nutmeg, throw a couple of pieces of butter. Cover the pumpkin with a cut lid.
3. Preheat the oven (up to 170-190 C), send the “stuffed” pumpkin there and bake for 60-80 minutes. After which we cool slightly and serve, scooping up the pulp in a place with creamy cheese contents, in deep plates.
Recipe 3: Baked Pumpkin with Rice, Apples, and Nuts
A real homemade lunch! Tight, hearty, rich, and most importantly - tasty and healthy. Rice for such stuffed pumpkin is better to get long-grain, so as not to boil. Pumpkin, of course, should be whole, intact, because we will fill its halves with filling and bake.
Ingredients:
- one spoon (tablespoon) of raisins
- two tablespoons of almonds
- pumpkin weighing about 2 kg
- four medium apples
- tea L. cinnamon
- 150 gr. plums
- 150 gr. drain. oils
- two table. lies. Sahara
- three to four table. spoons of rice
- salt (pinch)
Cooking method:
1. Boil rice until half cooked (it is very important not to boil it). Wash raisins and pour uncooked boiling water to swell the pulp. Cut the pumpkin in half without removing the skin. We remove seeds and pulp from it, leaving walls two centimeters thick.
2. Finely chopped pulp, chop my plums, remove seeds from them and also finely chop. We peel the apples, remove the core with seeds and shred with a thin straw.
3. We chop the almonds with a knife and fry in a pan without adding vegetable oil. Fry, stirring, until golden brown.
4. We heat the oven (up to about 190 C). We put raisins in a colander so that the glass is moist, after which we mix all the cooked ingredients (chilled rice, plums, apples, pumpkin pulp, raisins, almonds, sugar, 100 gr. Plums. Butter, cinnamon).
5. We start the resulting halves of the pumpkin with the filling, put them on a greased baking sheet, put the dish in the oven for an hour and a half until the pumpkin and rice are completely softened. Before serving, water both halves with the remaining butter.
Recipe 4: Vegetable-meat stew in a pumpkin
The original stew baked in a pumpkin cavity, which in addition to vegetables contains tender white beans, as well as chicken meat, previously fried in a pan, preserves all the useful properties of vegetables due to the fact that they will be in a confined space and baked in the oven.
Ingredients:
- one pumpkin
- bell pepper 2 pcs.
- five cloves of garlic
- pickled corn - 1 jar
- Three spoons grows. oils
- two bow heads
- 200 gr. white pickled beans (in jars)
- 400 gr. potato
- 400 gr. tomato
- 500 gr. chicken fillet
- a bunch of greenery
- butter
- 200 gr. dried apricots
- a tablespoon of coriander
- spices (optional), salt
Cooking method:
1. Cut the top off the pumpkin, remove all the seeds inside and grease the inside of the pumpkin with butter. Grease a baking sheet with fat, put a pumpkin with a lid, send it to the oven for 1 hour.
2. Peel potatoes, peppers, onions, garlic from the skin (and pepper - from seeds). Cut the potatoes into large pieces, onions and peppers - in half rings, garlic - finely. Scald tomatoes with boiling water and peel them. Greens chopped.
3. In a dry frying pan, fry the coriander (over high heat for about 40 seconds), remove them in a bowl. Then fry the onions in the same pan, and then chop the chicken fillet sliced into pieces (if necessary, add a little water), simmer until half cooked.
4. Next, add potatoes, peppers,, tomatoes, dried apricots and beans to onions and chicken, pour one and a half liters of water and bring the vegetables to a boil, pour garlic and cooled ground coriander. Stew vegetables for 20 minutes. Three minutes before cooking, add marinated corn to the stew.
5. After removing from heat, we throw greens into the stew. We spread it in a pumpkin, cover it and send it to bake for half an hour. That's all! Enjoy your meal!
Pumpkin in the oven - tips from experienced chefs
- When buying a pumpkin, give preference to one that has a dense, un wrinkled, undamaged peel without extraneous spots and looks heavier than its size;
- Winter pumpkin varieties are stored much longer than summer ones. As a rule, they “love” cool dark places, but not a refrigerator, and can maintain their structure for several weeks and even months;
- You can also stock up on a pumpkin for the future, peeling it, cutting it into pieces and freezing it in the freezer. Later, this raw material will certainly come in handy for culinary purposes;
- The pumpkin has a very soft, mild taste, so it is ideally combined with ingredients that have a strong intense aroma (garlic, cheese, thyme, rosemary, thyme, as well as other herbs and spices).
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