Paul Virant's Pumpkin Butter Recipe on Food52 (2024)

FAQs

Paul Virant's Pumpkin Butter Recipe on Food52? ›

Preheat the oven to 350° F. In a bowl, mix together the roasted pumpkin, sugar, butter, salt, cinnamon, nutmeg, ginger, and cloves. Spread onto a 9 by 13-inch baking pan and bake, stirring every 15 minutes with a spatula, until the pumpkin has become thick and slightly caramelized, about 1 1/2 hours.

Yet year after year, people are disappointed to learn that they cannot can it at home, neither by water bath canning nor by pressure canning. The same holds true for unsweetened purées of pumpkin and winter squash. Pumpkin butter and purée can, however, be safely frozen.

Pumpkin butter is actually a fruit spread, similar to apple butter. It has a smooth, creamy texture but does not contain butter.

This pumpkin butter makes an excellent hostess gift. Spread it on toast and muffins, add it to baked goods, or drizzle it over vanilla ice cream. Keep it in the refrigerator for up to three weeks.

All vegetables, except tomatoes, should be canned in a pressure canner at 10 pounds pressure (240°F). You may can tomatoes in either a water bath canner or a pressure canner, but you should always hot pack them.

Pumpkin seed and sunflower seed butters are both safe for dogs as long as they don't contain added salt or sugar. They offer plenty of vitamins, minerals, and fiber that can benefit your pup's health and digestion—just avoid giving them too much at one time!

Two tablespoons of roasted pumpkin seed butter provides 190 calories, 17 grams of fat and 8 grams of protein. It's also an excellent source of manganese and magnesium providing 60% and 40% of the recommended daily amount, respectively. It's also a good source of vitamin E and iron.

Why is pumpkin seed butter green? Pumpkin seed butter is made from pepitas, which are small and green (about the size of a pine nut) and are only found in certain pumpkin and squash varieties. These blended pumpkin seeds result in butter that's dark, earthy green.

No, pumpkin butter is not the same as pumpkin purée. Pumpkin purée is 100% pure pumpkin that has been blended into a smooth consistency, whereas you cook the pumpkin purée with additional ingredients to make this pumpkin spread.

When cooked down into a butter, pumpkin flesh becomes quite dense, making it difficult for the heat produced in a canner to penetrate fully through the contents of the jar. This means that even in a pressure canner, the interior of the jar may not reach the 240 degrees needed to kill those pesky botulism spores.

Is Trader Joe's pumpkin butter vegan? ›

Trader Joe's Pumpkin Body Butter is one of those rare products that we implore you not to eat. For while it does contain pumpkin, it does in fact resemble whipped marshmallow, it's vegan, its scent is reminiscent of pumpkin pie, and it is called butter, it's not the kind of butter you slather on toast.

It must be pressure canned to prevent botulism. It is not recommended to can pumpkin puree as it is too dense to heat thoroughly and kill all the bacteria. Pressure Canning is easy to do.

Because butter is a low acid food, a simple boiling water bath canner will not be able to get hot enough to kill botulism and other toxins in the final product. This means that if you are canning butter, you must pressure can it.

The acidity level of the items you're canning will determine whether you use a water-bath canner or a pressure canner. Foods with a high acidity level, such as pickles and jams, can be canned in a simple pot of boiling water, known as a water-bath canner.