41 perfect pumpkin recipes (2024)

FAQs

Is pumpkin good for diabetes and high blood pressure? ›

To help decrease your blood pressure, try eating pumpkin, which contains potassium that helps to control blood pressure. Potassium also helps with bone health and decreases your risk for diabetes. Around 10% of your daily potassium is found in just a half-cup serving of canned pumpkin.

Raw pumpkin is mostly water — up to 90%! — so it really doesn't have much flavor. In fact, the flavor that we usually think of as “pumpkin” is actually pumpkin pie spice, a blend of ginger, cinnamon, nutmeg, and cloves.

“Choose a pumpkin that's firm and has its stem still intact,” Barlogia says. “Squeezing the pumpkin can tell you how long it's going to sit on your porch—any soft spots won't last long.” She adds that a healthy pumpkin has a strong stem, and pumpkins that are dehydrated have brittle stems that easily break off.

If you really want to go all out, you can even grate whole cinnamon sticks, ginger knobs, nutmeg, cloves, and allspice berries. It's definitely more work, but the intense spice flavors work wonders to enhance the dull flavor of canned pumpkin.

Although pumpkin is a higher potassium food, in moderation it can be beneficial for your overall health. Pumpkin is packed with nutritional benefits that are great for the renal diet including fiber, Vitamin C and beta-carotene. So go ahead, enjoy this fall delights in moderation today!

Pumpkin ranks high on the glycemic index at 75, but low on the glycemic load at 3. People might assume that it is bad for diabetics because of its high GI, but that is not true. Its low GL rank indicates that having a small portion of pumpkin is perfectly safe and will not drastically increase your blood sugar levels.

Answer. A pumpkin, from a botanist's perspective, is a fruit because it's a product of the seed-bearing structure of flowering plants. Vegetables, on the other hand, are the edible portion of plants such as leaves, stems, roots, bullbs, flowers, and tubers.

To complement pumpkin with sweet flavor pairings, consider using spices like nutmeg, cinnamon, allspice and vanilla, or sweet ingredients like chocolate, maple, honey, cranberries or brown sugar. Create savory dishes by pairing pumpkin with spices like chilies, cajun, cayenne or pepper.

If you've carved a pumpkin before, chances are you cut a circle around the pumpkin stem and reached in through the top to scoop out the pumpkin insides. We think the secret to carving the perfect pumpkin is to cut the pumpkin from the bottom rather than the top. This will also help make your pumpkin last longer.

What kind of pumpkin is best for pie? ›

Choose The Right Kind

For cooking, you'll want to use sugar pumpkins (also called pie or sweet pumpkins), which are small and round. Long Island Cheese pumpkins, which are more oblong and can look like a wheel of cheese, are also good to eat.

A pie pumpkin will often feel heavier for its size than a carving pumpkin will. You can eat either one of them, but the pie pumpkin is likely to taste a lot better and have better texture. The carving pumpkin will probably be tougher, stringier, less sweet and just generally less flavorful.

Milk has calcium in it, pumpkins like calcium as it allows them to uptake various nutrients.

Canned pumpkin and pumpkin puree are the same thing, and you'll often see the terms used interchangeably in recipes and cookbooks. Unlike pumpkin pie mix, canned pumpkin does not have any spices, sugars, or other additives. In many cases, the only ingredient is pumpkin.

Sugar Pie Pumpkin

The sugar pie pumpkin, also known as sugar pumpkin, is a small pumpkin that is prized for its sweet and smooth flesh.

You limit dairy products, red meat, sweets, added sugars, sodium (salt), and highly processed foods. Some additional guidelines include focusing on seasonal produce and reading food labels to help you avoid added sodium and sugar.

Households that take part in the Teal Pumpkin Project offer Halloween happiness to children managing a range of medical conditions, including tens of thousands of youngsters with diabetes.

Carbs. There are 12 grams of carbohydrates in one cup of pumpkin. Some of that carbohydrate is fiber (2.7 grams) and some is naturally occurring sugars (5.1 grams).

While it's sometimes associated with seasonal lattes and desserts, pumpkin can be a simple addition to sweet and savory cuisines. Pumpkin is considered a safe food for most healthy adults, but check with a healthcare provider if you have a history of food allergies, are pregnant, or are taking certain medications.