Baked Pumpkin Soup

One of my favorite things about sustainable gardening is eating well!


I was asked yesterday how to cook a Hubbard squash. Since I don't have a formal recipe for that yet, please consider this one:

Baked Pumpkin Soup

1 six inch pumpkin

2 small to medium potatoes

3-4 pounds beef, deer, elk, or other red meat cut into one inch cubes

1 onion or 6 top setting onions, diced

1 cup potato broth


olive or sesame seed oil

black pepper, freshly ground


Open and clean the pumpkin like you would a jack-o-lantern. Grind pepper on the inside and drizzle half a tablespoon of oil in the bottom of the pumpkin.

Put the pumpkin with its lid on onto a baking sheet and put it in a preheated oven at 400 degrees for one hour.

Cut up the potatoes and boil till almost done. Bigger chunks take more time, smaller ones less.

While the pumpkin and potatoes are cooking, coat the meat in black pepper and brown in an oiled cast iron frying pan.

Remove the meat and brown the onions.

Add the meat back to the onions and cook together for two minutes.

Take one cup of liquid from the potatoes (or one cup water) and add to the meat. Cover the frying pan and continue cooking the meat for ten minutes. Keep hot till pumpkin is ready.

After one hour take the pumpkin out and lower the temperature to 325 degrees.

Take the lid off the pumpkin and add the hot meat and onions with broth to the inside of the pumpkin. Put the potatoes in on top of the meat and put the top back on the pumpkin.

Place the pumpkin back in the oven and continue cooking for one hour.

Remove pumpkin and serve by ladling out the meat and potatoes and by scraping flesh from the sides of the pumpkin.

This is a highly variable recipe and will likely turn out different each time. And remember, the pepper is the key ingredient in making the red meat and pumpkin blend.

Enjoy!