There’s often a grain of truth in old wives’ tales. Well, not always of course. Some deserve to be quietly forgotten but every now and then you stumble across a tip worth trialling. This week, that tip involved a pumpkin.
Now, cutting pumpkins in our house is generally considered a health and safety event. My husband has unofficially appointed himself Chief Health & Safety Officer whenever a pumpkin appears on the kitchen bench. There’s usually a lot of caution, a sharp knife, and the distinct possibility of someone losing their dignity (or digits). So when I heard the suggestion that you could simply bake a whole pumpkin in the oven for 30 minutes and then slice through it easily, I was curious.
The instructions I’d heard were vague. Put pumpkin in oven. Wait. Slice. Simple enough.
So I set the oven to 200°C and popped the whole pumpkin in. Thirty minutes later, I poked it with a knife. To be honest, nothing about it inspired confidence. Undeterred, I gave it another ten minutes. Forty minutes total. Out it came and onto the bench.
Then life intervened. I wandered off and had lunch. By the time I came back, the pumpkin had cooled a little and it was time for the real test.
Knife in hand, I attempted the first cut. Nope. Still stubborn. At this point I was ready to declare the entire thing a complete myth. Until, I flipped the pumpkin over to attack it from the base and noticed that the bottom felt noticeably softer than the top. Maybe it was the way my oven circulates heat. Maybe the tray conducted more warmth into the base. Whatever the reason, the underside had definitely softened. So I tried again.
It bloody well worked! Before I knew it, I’d quartered the pumpkin with surprisingly little effort and, most importantly, without any swearing. The inside wasn’t fully cooked either, which was perfect. It hadn’t turned into pumpkin soup. It was simply softened enough to make preparation easier. Not only could I cut through the whole pumpkin, removing the outer skin was like cutting a hot knife through butter. A dream!
The theory is sound, but the timing will depend on the size of your pumpkin and how your oven behaves.
So next time you’ve got a particularly stubborn pumpkin sitting on the bench, give it a head start in the oven.
