it doesn't really bother me that it isn't all 'actual' pumpkin, although i think the label should reflect that.
what i want to know is how do i get around using canned pumpkin? i have two 'pumpkin pie pumpkins' that i would love to turn into pie, but don't know how to go about it. do i cook it like a squash and then go from there?

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Does it matter whether canned pumpkin is "pumpkin" or another type of squash?

Not to me. As long as it isn't chockfull of food colorings, flavor boosters, and preservatives, I'm not too fussed. But, then again, I'm not a terribly fussy gal -- and I'm really only willing to roast a pumpkin once every year or two.

As long as a pumpkin pie tastes delicious, I don't care if it's pumpkin or squash.
Put enough whipped cream on anything and I'll eat it!

I'm ok with it the way it is. At least it doesn't have artificial flavorings.

Also, I've used "real" pumpkins (those cute little ones that are intended for cooking, not carving) in two recipes recently and was super disappointed. They had no positive flavor and a little icky flavor. Both recipes are better with squash.

Doesn't matter to me. A pumpkin pie by any other name would taste as sweet.

Meh.

I don't care what kind of winter squash it is, but I just don't agree that the flavour of canned pumpkin is the same as fresh/frozen. So I process my own pumpkins.

Cassiopia, cut them in half, remove seeds and strings, then roast them in the oven. When they're fork tender, remove, peel and puree in a food processor, food mill or blender (with water added). I then drain them in a colander and drink the juice too. Here's a post I made on the topic of processing pumpkin (mods please delete this response if the link is not appropriate):

http://seidhr.blogspot.com/2008/10/pumpkin-puree-juice-seeds-and-butter.html

Given that "pumpkin" in most of the world is synonymous with squash, I'm not too upset. Often it's other squashes that are sweeter anyway. For (sweet American-style) pie and other baked goods, canned is best. For soups and savory dishes, I prefer fresh. And that's just because of texture.

Ultimately, I agree with the other posters that the most important part is the lack of artificial additions!

Although it wouldn't keep me from using canned pumpkin if I was pressed for time, I still prefer to make my own puree. Call me a purest but I started using my own puree a few years ago and I prefer the taste over the canned stuff. I also like making my own puree because I get to roast the left over seeds and coat them in cinnamon, sugar and a little cayenne pepper - can't get that extra bonus using the canned pumpkin!! :)

I usually roast my own - because it's easy, so why buy the canned stuff? Get a small pumpkin ("sugar" or "pie" pumpkin), and either cut it in half and scoop out seeds and strings and bake at 375-400 until tender (45 minutes?), let cool, and scoop out of the skin. Let it drain overnight or longer. I don't even run it through the food processor (because I don't have one) before using it - just mix it with whatever spices I need for whatever I'm making with it.

Oh man you scared me with the "what's REALLY in that can?" lead off! As long as it's all nice, orange squash of one sort or another...

seidhr-

thanks so much for the instructions! i see a pumpkin pie in my future...

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I don't use canned, but, the composition of it doesn't bother me. My family has used butternut squash for decades. It's so much easier to deal with than pumpkins, it's less stringy, and nobody can tell the difference.

Peel the butternut squash, take out the little bit of seeds, chop it into chunks, boil it/steam it, and mash.

Cassiopia, check out Faith's How To: Make Pumpkin Puree.

I've always had issues getting my pumpkin or squash dry enough to make into pie with the same ratios as regular pumpkin pie. I tried to do it on the stove, cooking chunks and innards leftover from carving 4 pumpkins until it was soft, the strings were broken down, and the pulp dry/condensed enough. Took forever and had to keep cooking a second day since it still wasn't smooth enough. So much easier and quicker to buy the canned.

Interesting to know! Maybe that's why canned tastes so much better than fresh. My one attempt to make PP filling from scratch was pretty mediocre.

As long as it tastes like what I think of as pumpkin (i.e. DELICIOUS), it's fine with me.

I agree with Shana Lee and other posters; for my purposes, squash and pumpkin are interchangeable. Pumpkin goes in my butternut squash soup if I want, and squash goes in pumpkin-chocolate chip bread for the same. Not *all* squash, and not *all* pumpkins, mind you; there are differences and a spaghetti squash will not go into a pumpkin pie, even if I were a pumpkin pie eater! (Gasp! It's true.)

I make my own pumpkin puree by halving, scooping out the seeds/guts, and roasting (cut side up) at 400 for ~30 min. I let cool, remove skin, and smash up/blend. Transfer to storage containers, label, throw it in the freezer. (Which reminds me that I've got some pumpkins to transform and some puree to use...)

in australia butternut squash is known as butternut pumpkin. i didn't even know they were called squash until i starting using recipes off the internet.

I think the canned is the most consistent. Making your own puts you at the mercy of what's in the market. I like roasted pumpkin, but for pie, the canned is far smoother. And Libby's is superior to the "organic" sold at TJ's.

Over here, we call all of those things pumpkin. You'll never hear a New Zealand say "butternut squash". We call them "butternut pumpkins". So there would be no uproar on canned pumpkin ingredients over here. Not that I have ever seen pumpkin in a can in New Zealand. The can could cost more than the pumpkin!

I'm not so concerned about it not being pumpkin, more concerned about the cans being lined with BPA. If you're making fresh puree, using a hand blender to puree it helps reduce the stringiness.

Cheese Pumpkins are the way to go.

I have almost always (20 years) cooked my own. I use steamed organic pie pumpkin or other orange winter squash based on what looks best at the time. On a couple of occasions I have tried the canned and been disappointed.

I have been considering trying roasting instead of steaming. Has anyone tried both methods? What are your thoughts?

Beware... some of the 'better' pumpkin pie filling brands that are easily found at grocery stores do have preservatives in them.. such as dipotassium phosphate. My husband is horribly allergic, (gets nasty bumps all over his hands within minutes) so we've had to cut this out of our pantry which can be hard to do. It is in so much that uses dairy products which are canned or otherwise shelf stable. Supposedly it keeps milkfats separating from the milk. ie good old evaporated milk... we can only buy the skim versions, because the others have the preservative.
FYI.

@magdelane
Yeah, and I should mention that there is a huge difference between products such as Lobby's 100% Pure Pumpkin and others that call themselves 'pie fillings'... they already have spices sugar, evaporated milk and the ensuing preservatives.

I made pumpkin pie bars this weekend using delicata squash. Everyone at home knows they're squash bars but they still think they taste like pumpkin bars.

I'm firmly in the group that doesn't care a bit what is in the can as long as it isn't icky preservatives etc.
Growing up in the south one could never be sure the orange colored pie on the table was pumpkin or sweet potato and frankly I had a hard time telling the difference myself until adulthood. As revolution9 said: enough whipped cream and pie is pie.

Have you heard about the scandal involved with the olive oil industry? Turns out that a lot of the olive oil you've been buying from Italy is actually grapeseed oil.

Like most others, as long as it doesn't have crazy additives, I don't care what is in the can, be it pumpkin, squash or gourd. Libby's is fantastic and SUCH a time-saver. Plus, I add so much pumpkin pie spices that it wouldn't really matter what the filling was made from.

I was given a "pumpkin pie" pumpkin this year, but it's still sitting on a table as decoration. I don't trust myself to make a good puree and it's too cute to hack apart.

I read about this years ago, so it's no big surprise to me, but I do think that the label should reflect the contents.

I prefer using the canned version because it is a huge time saver. One year I decided to make it from scratch. It was a lot of work, and once it was finished, I honestly couldn't tell the difference between that or the pie made with the canned pumpkin.

I can see why they don't say what's actually in it. It would only make people fussy. Besides, since pumpkin is a squash, there shouldn't be allergy concerns.

I'm a little bothered by the dishonesty, but people have done worse things.

Tried making a pumpkin pie from scratch - twice - years ago. Totally not worth the effort. Buy the canned pumpkin and save yourself tons of work. Pumpkin tastes like crap anyhow until you spice it up and mix it with a ton of sugar and fat! It's one of those foods that was made to be canned.

If it is not pumpkin, labels should list true ingredients. Our "cinnamon" is really cassia. While this has been forgiven for years, is ignorance a good thing, ever? Garden plants, heirloom seeds, cosmetics, medicines, high-fructose-corn syrup-filled drinks, gasoline (what if it weren't really gasoline? would that matter?)--what's really in there is about stewardship, truth in advertising, choice and environmental knowledge. If it's not pumpkin, I'll still eat it. But I'm not happy to learn of misleading labels.

The distinction between pumpkin and squash is pretty fuzzy. The advertisers aren't necessarily being dishonest or even misleading, since pumpkin is a word that can be used to refer to a number of different gourds. In some languages, there's only one word and it encompasses both what we in America know as pumpkin and squash. I lived in Bulgaria for three years. No canned pumpkin in the grocery stores there! They also didn't have what we typically think of as a "pumpkin", i.e., round and orange. They had round white ones and orange ones that were shaped more like a butternut squash. I quickly found out that what was inside tasted pretty much the same once you cooked it! If you're going to DIY (super easy rainy saturday project while you're puttering around the house doing other things, btw; cut it up and simmer it on low in a stock pot, stir every 15 minutes or so to keep it from sticking, start mashing it with a potato masher when it softens, cook it until there's hardly any water left in it, give it a quick spin through the blender at the end just to even out the consistency, measure it out into quart ziploc bags containing however much pumpkin your pie recipe calls for - mine is 1.5 cups - lay the bags flat in the freezer, and pull one out when you want to bake), butternut squash actually gives you more flesh and less seeds and hollow space than a jack-o-lantern type pumpkin does.

Pumpkin you cook yourself will usually still have more water in it than commercially canned pumpkin. I usually add an extra egg to my pie recipe when using home-prepared pumpkin so that it will "set" as firmly as we're used to with commercial pumpkin.

I found this video (http://www.howtoeatacupcake.net/2009/11/video-making-pumpkin-pie-with-fresh.html) informative and humorous on making your own pumpkin puree.

In grad school, I once made two pumpkin pies, one from the can and the other from a pie pumpkin, for a side-by-side taste test. My roommates could not tell the difference, but the canned one was a lot less work - add in cost of energy efficiencies and the can makes sense. (But I still buy the little ones for decoration purposes and then turn them into soup after Thanksgiving.)

A friend once did a consulting gig in Morton/Peoria, Illinois where the Libby's packing plant is, and she said the whole town smelled like pumpkin. I like to think about a town that smells like pumpkin.

Pumpkin is squash. It's one of the many varieties of winter squash we are lucky enough to have in our markets, thanks to our farmers. It wouldn't bother me at all is there was a mixture of squash in a can of pumpkin, as all squash, save spagetti squash, make great pies.

The variety of pumpkins we get in the UK around Hallowe'en really aren't good for eating. They are largely tasteless and useless for either sweet or savoury recipes so personally I would use butternut squash in pumpkin recipes. It's available most of the year round and reasonably cheap. When pumpkins are grown in private gardens and allotments in the UK it's mostly for size and to win competions

I suspect that over here we don't eat much pumpkin because we've never needed to. I believe it was Engels (Karl Marx's buddy) who said the the British would never have a revolution because we eat too much meat (ie even the poor were reasonably well fed - at least by 19th century continental and Russian standards)!

OK, I confess that I find so many people with so many opinions on this topic that I thought I'd set the record straight. For 10 years I lived in the Morton, Illinois area (Peoria, Illinois) and every fall did a few things. I dodged 25# pumpkins falling off of trucks and skidding along the road on occasion, went to the Morton Pumpkin Festival and watched the pumpkin processing of Libby's pumpkin plant every fall.

I can honestly say that while there was some pumpkin odors down wind of the plant on occasion, the "entire city" does not smell like pumpkin. All food processing plants which involve water and fruits or vegetables have a fragrance of the food that they process. I know first hand that sugar beets, onions and potatoes all have definitive odors of the product processed at varying times of the year from the processing plant. Better than a feed lot, I will tell you! LOL

The pumpkins used by Libby's are a Dickenson version of C. moschata pumpkin that is a unique pumpkin. The only place one can find the seeds is if you are a grower under contract to Libby's. All seeds are provided to the farmers by Libby's. My guess is that Libby's saves them from the processing of the pumpkins, but am not certain.

The pumpkins are a lighter color than the jack-o-lantern verion we see in stores and fruit stands. They look more like a butternut squash. Probably because they are in the same family. As I recall the complete name for their pumpkins is, Libby's Select Dickinson (C. moschata)

The Libby's pumpkin is almost all meat. The center of the pumkin is a very small cavity with few strings and not as many seeds as we'd see in a typical Halloween pumpkin. The meat is probably 3" (or more) thick and all but impossible to carve for a jack-o-lantern. I know as I tried once.

The pumpkin at the Libby's plant (no I had/have no business or financial connection with them) is 100% pumpkin. Nothing else. So please do not feel you are being cheated, given butternut sqash (same family but not the same plant).

The plant was at one time open for tours during the pumpkin festival as I recall. Having owned and operated my own USDA inspected food processing plant for 8 years and done work with Simplot (they provide McDonalds, Burger King and others with their french fries), I'm familiar with the processes involved but we did no canning. My plant ownership was about 8 years after I moved from Illinois.

Sugar beets (also grown in Idaho-not Iowa or Illinois-where I now live) are processed in a very similar manner to the pumpkins, except dried or made into a syrup instead of canning.

It is my recollection that the entire plant processing time for canning pumpkins is only 4-8 weeks. During that time they process 85-90% of all pumpkin (canned) in the US. All grown within 50 or so miles of Morton and on about 5,000 acres of land. It is why there was a spike in prices for canned pumpkin in 2009 (I believe that was the year) as there was a powdery mildew that almost wiped out the entire crop of Libby's pumpkins.

There you have the majority of what I know on this topic. Anything under a Libby's label or private labeled for them in pure pumpkin. Nothing else.

im a little late to this party, however i thought i would add that i use goose neck squash, grown from a local amish farm for my pumpkin pies. the texture and taste is perfect. i peel, cube and then steam it until tender. sometimes i press out any extra moisture using cheesecloth. and i like a heavily spiced pie. paired with a homemade crust and fresh made whipped cream- oh mylanta, its heaven.

I love all squashes and the tastes are all pretty similar so I wouldn't care that much, but I can see how people would be upset. I just make my own puree now.

I just grew butternut squash and used it in replace of pumpkin in many recipes and it came out very nice, a similar taste and textures as libbys with a bit more of a homemade taste. My father, who would eat libbys would not eat the pie at first cause it was butternut, but once I was able to trick him, he tried it and luved it. To make purea with either pumpkin or squash, you roast the pumpkin in the oven with a little water and scoop out the purea and blend it or put it through a vegetable mill.

This year I grew butternut squash. I have been growing pumpkin for years and they are great in pumpkin but this year I used the butternut and it was even better. It has a similar taste to libby's with a fresher taste. I also used them in cookies and other recipes that called for pumpkin, including recipes calling specifically for canned. Butternut squash is more expensive then pumpkin actually, but I grew them in the garden and they are fine.

Oh so I am guessing this article was incorrect. That being said, butternut squash tastes the same as pumpkin in pies. I grow sugar pumpkins as well and they do look simiar, but butternut is more brown on teh outside.

Actually, I grow sugar pumpkins and in NY Long Island they could also be purchased at most chain grocery stores, in the vegetable section not the outside where they sell the jack-o-lanterns. In my opinion, they don't look that much different then jack-o-lanterns, but are significantly smaller and more ideal for cooking, as the butternut is more meat and less fibers and seeds inside. When I have recycled jack-o-lantern pumpkins in the past, I had to clean them and strain them a lot in order to get the good stuff out of them.. Butternut squash is tan, but has a very orange taste on the outside. I do however find that with butternut, I don't need to strain the blended pumpkin, as it is meatier and dryer then pumpkin. Butternut squash in the stores is a lot more expensive then sugar pumpkins which are often on sale for four dollars whereas sugar pies could be offered for only two and canned pumpkin is often pretty affordable, which is probably why pumpkin or canned pumpkin is more commonly used as apposed to butternut, but I am not sure. One year when all my pumpkins were eaten by rodents, I bought locally grown sugar pumpkins fresh from stop and shop and planted the seeds. Since then I have been growing pumpkins from the sames seeds. Now that I spray them with natural spray, they don't get eaten as much. My father doesn't seem to understand that the reason for the pumpkins being so small is that they are a smaller variety and not because of lack of success with the garden.

Well butternut squash is similar on the inside to sugar pie pumpkins but on the outside, looks different. I have been growing pumpkin for years but just started growing butternut. Butternut is more expenstive, but now that I started using it, they are soooooooo much better. Sugar pumpkins, on the outside, look like a smaller version of jack-o-lantern pumpkins, but have far less seeds, butternut squash has even less seeds, is even sweeter and more meaty. They are all in the same family but have similar tastes. One user posted a comment saying they do not use butternut, libby's, and I do know in stores butternut squash is a lot more pricey.

I personally bake my pumpkins til they're soft, then scoopy the soft flesh out, and puree :) It's so much easier to just bake them as a half pumpkin, than to cut them up first.

It doesn't matter to me. I once tried making my own pumpkin puree--we cooked and processed it as we figured home-made would turn out better than canned and we were disappointed given all of the work. We just didn't detect any difference in freshness nor thought for that matter that there was a discernable difference in taste. I'll save home-made effort for something like applesauce as that is a much different story.

I recently used homemade sugar pumpkin puree for my pumpkin pies and was slightly disappointed in the color, but it tasted just as good as canned! I think I'll stick to canned from now on unless there is a nutritional benefit to the fresh stuff :-/

After all is said and done, I will use the canned Libby's. I do not have room to grow my own pumpkins or squashes and I just like the flavor and convenience. One tip my Mother always used was to cook the canned Libby pumpkin in a saucepan for a few minutes stirring all the time before using it in the pie recipe. It really makes a difference and takes off the "raw" taste.

I have always made "pumpkin" pie from squash, I usually pick a large amount of squashes at a u-pick farm near my house, and I bake, purée and freeze some of them for pie making. Cheaper than buying canned stuff, easy, and I save the planet by not using all that energy that goes into making a single aluminum can.

If you're making a pumpkin pie from baking pumpkins, it can help both color and flavor to add some baked sweet potato. That way you get some extra sweetness and the smooth, creamy texture of the potato and can still call it pumpkin...then again, I'd take sweet potato pie over pumpkin pie any day.