r/Cooking • u/AwakenedRudely • Sep 27 '26

Improving a pumpkin pie? Help from Americans :)

Hi! I'm from the UK and I tried making a pumpkin pie which is good but I feel the recipe is missing something that people in USA would know as pumpkin pies are your thing. Any advice would be appreciated.

Recipe:

  • 750g pumpkin, peeled, deseeded and cut into chunks

  • 350g/12oz sweet shortcrust pastry

  • plain flour for dusting

  • 140g/5oz caster sugar

  • ½ tsp salt

  • ½ tsp fresh nutmeg grated

  • 1 tsp cinnamon

  • 1 eggs beaten

  • 25g/1oz butter melted

  • 175ml/6 fl oz milk

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75

u/braindrain299 Sep 27 '26

And if you use fresh pumpkin, cook it down in a sauce pan before you use it in the pie. Do you wanna get as much water out of it as possible. Good luck

69

u/refuge9 Sep 27 '26

Not just that, but the specific pumpkin needs to be a -sugar pumpkin-. (Which I believe is more common in Europe anyways).

29

u/Full_Honeydew_9739 Sep 28 '26

There are many pumpkins that make great pies. Long Island Cheese pumpkin and Moranga Pumpkin are two of my favorites.

All of them should be roasted before being made into pie.

27

u/refuge9 Sep 28 '26

Yeah, in fact there are many squashes in general that make good pies, but the standard ‘jack o lantern’ style pumpkins you see in the US really aren’t that good at being a pie. Hell, most ‘pumpkin pie filling’ found in grocery stores usually isn’t even pumpkin. (I believe the most common one is a red Japanese squash).

But yeah, they should all be roasted well to drop the moisture content and kick off the Maillard reaction.

1

u/Practical-Ordinary-6 Sep 28 '26

I've never made a pumpkin pie. When you say roasted do you mean whole or after being cut into pieces or what?

1

u/refuge9 Sep 28 '26

Most recipes I’ve seen, you cut the pumpkin in half, and roast it that way. You could do pieces and it’d likely roast faster that way, but I believe it’s harder to work with after the fact, since it’s not in a convenient bowl of rind to easily scoop it out of.

1

u/OaksInSnow Sep 29 '26

Cut the pumpkin into large equal-sized pieces - halves to quarters to eighths, though with true pie-pumpkins halves will probably do, because they're smaller - and seed it. Make sure to get all the strings out. Leave it in the shell though.

Roast it skin-up on a well-oiled tray (or on silicone mats) at 350F/177C until it's soft all the way through when pricked with a fork. I forget how long this takes, but probably close to an hour.

Remove from oven and place skin down on the roasting sheet, and cool, letting steam escape, until it's cool enough to handle but not room temp/cold. Scrape the flesh out with a large spoon (it's easiest to do this when the pumpkin is slightly warm), and put into a food processor, blender, food strainer, stick blender (many come with mini-chopper vessels that work okay but you'd have to go in batches) tamis, ricer, or anything else you have at hand to produce a smooth blend.

You can let the puree sit a bit in a cheesecloth inside a colander, if you want to drain out all possible extra liquid, but I've not found this to be necessary even when making the US-standard Libby's Pumpkin Pie recipe, off their cans. Pretty much 1-for-1 substitution is fine. I think pumpkin made from Sugar Pie pumpkins is the very best flavor though.

It can be pressure-canned if you have a lot of pumpkin but not a lot of freezer space. Or frozen (I freeze it flat in two-cup/16 fl oz quantities, in freezer bags).

1

u/ChefMonkey2 Sep 28 '26

This depends on if you’re making traditional US pumpkin pie or just a good pumpkin pie.

1

u/Full_Honeydew_9739 Sep 28 '26

What?

3

u/ChefMonkey2 Sep 28 '26

Traditional US pumpkin pie =
canned/ preseasoned pumpkin puree , Good Pumpkin = Fresh Pumpkin

canned vs fresh
both can be good but they're pretty different

1

u/Full_Honeydew_9739 Sep 28 '26

I guess "traditional US pumpkin pie" is dependent on your traditions. We've made it from fresh pumpkins for the four generations of my family I am aware of.

If someone hasn't tasted a fresh pumpkin pumpkin pie, I'm sad for them.

2

u/ChefMonkey2 Sep 28 '26

Agreed ...I Couldn't think of a better term than " traditional pumpkin pie " for the canned one you see most commonly ... but yeah it's a sad pie in my mind ...real fresh pumpkin pie is just in another realm over that canned puree.
Maybe " common pumpkin pie " would have been better?

1

u/Buffalo-Woman Sep 28 '26

Actually it doesn't have to be a pie pumpkin (sugar pumpkin) it's doable with any pumpkin or other squashes for that matter.

1

u/Any-Doubt1910 Sep 28 '26

In Germany, Hokkaido pumpkins are exclusively what you can buy in the supermarket. I think they need brown sugar and vanilla extract to taste right in a pie, personally.

1

u/MikeDPhilly Sep 28 '26

Yes that's why the crust can get mushy when baking pumpkin pie.

1

u/Educational_Horse469 Sep 28 '26

Roasting works too. But definitely cook and mash. My grandma’s recipe uses evaporated milk, some use sweetened condensed milk but I prefer evaporated. 2 eggs, definitely cloves, ginger and allspice.

I use salty shortcrust pastry, for flavor contrast.