Pumpkin Pie Puree

• Difficulty: Easy

Ingredients

• 1 small baking pumpkin ((4 to 6 pounds))
• to taste fine sea salt ((optional))

Instructions

1. Heat the oven to 400 degrees F and line a baking sheet with parchment paper.
2. Rinse and pat dry the pumpkin.
3. Cut the squash from stem to end, but don’t try to cut through the stem (it’s too tough). When you’ve cut through the pumpkin, just pull each half apart.
4. Scoop out the seeds (and use these because the raw green seed is delicious and can be eaten as is, roasted or cooked) and most of the stringy bits. Lightly season the inside of the pumpkin halves with salt then place cut-side-down onto the baking sheet.
5. Bake until the pumpkin can easily be pierced with a knife in several places and the flesh is pulling away from the skin, 45 to 60 minutes.
6. Cool until you can safely handle the halves then scoop out the soft flesh into a food processor — depending on how large the pumpkin is, you may need to do this in two batches. Process until very smooth, 3 to 5 minutes.
7. Now go make pie with your favourite recipe but omit the canned stuff!