DON’T THROW AWAY YOUR PUMPKIN GUTS!!!! Seriously. Hundreds of thousands of pumpkin guts are thrown away every year, and it is a shame, because they hold a secret power!!!! These guts are so deep and flavorful when prepared into a stock!!! This is my absolute favorite soup broth to use in ANY soup recipe! It is so incredibly tasty and it is basically free to make. Let’s get started.

Take a nice pile of pumpkin guts (from a medium sized pumpkin) and remove most of the seeds (I’ll be sharing recipes for roasting the seeds asap).

Heat a tablespoon or two of olive oil in a large pot, and add the innards. Stir for a few minutes.

Next you can either add 1 large, roughly chopped onion (you don’t even need to remove the skin since this is all going to be strained later), or you can start collecting veggie scraps and putting em in a freezer bag. I collect things like squash guts, carrot tops, onion scraps, leek scraps etc. Some veggies that won’t really work are the stanky ones- like broccoli, cauliflower, asparagus, etc. Anyways, when my bag is full, I just dump it in with my pumpkin guts, and stir it around for another few minutes.

Then you just simply add between 6 and 8 cups of water, bring it to a boil, and simmer for between 30-60 minutes (depending on how rushed you are haha).

When your stock has simmered for enough time, strain it into a big bowl, and you have gold!

This is a beautiful site for me to see. I hope it excites a few more of you too. Then I wont feel like such an easily excited loser.

Like I said before, this stock can be used in ANY recipe that requires chicken or veggie stock. In my opinion it is even MORE flavorful than its meaty competitors.

Since, I’m here and we are all waiting around with a pile of golden broth and nowhere to put it- well I suppose you could freeze it at this point for a later time- why don’t I share one of my favorite vegetarian soup recipes!

I was inspired to make a non- cream-based mushroom soup last year and found a recipe online. I changed it enough, that I’m pretty sure I can just take all the credit now. Observe:

You feel free to print that recipe right off. Classy molassy over here today. Oh, spellcheck, don’t act like ‘molassy’ isn’t a word!

So the first thing you want to do is fry up your onion and garlic in some olive oil in a large pot for a few minutes, or until the onion becomes translucent. Next add your 3-4 cups of sliced mushrooms, dried herbs, and chili flakes. (You can use any combination of any kind of mushrooms here- I just used button and brown mushrooms because it’s what I had on hand.)

*A.D.D. side note* My brother used to have a mushroom growing in his bathtub. And he just let it grow and grow… Weird.

After the mushrooms get all coated and cooky for around 5-10 minutes, add your lentils, barley and fresh thyme. I suppose you could use 1/2 tsp dried thyme leaves, but this is one spot where fresh thyme really makes a good difference!

What pretty, healthy food 🙂

After you add the lentils etc, pour your 2 quarts (8ish cups) of magical pumpkin gut stock (or any veggie or chicken stock) into the pot, and simmer for around half an hour. Season with salt and pepper to taste., but remember the stock has no added salt, so you might need more than you’d usually add to a soup.

Now shovel it in your face.  You can even put some of the soup in a small mason jar:

Hahaaha. I love sharing pointless ideas! Gosh, can you tell I didn’t get enough sleep last night? Sorry!

Anyways, if you haven’t seen my first 3 pumpkin posts be sure to check them out here:

Four Little Pumpkins

Part One: Button Tree Pumpkin

Part Two:Jack Skellington-O-Lantern

Part Three: Button BOO! Pumpkin 

BUT! If you realllly want to see what you should be doing with a pumpkin, check out this awesome video… that involves bullets LOL (Don’t try this at home.)

Happy Pumpkin gutting/shooting! (Who knew carving and cooking pumpkins was such an intense sport!?)

~Dot