Dinner in a Pumpkin ~ Recipe

Mon, 01 Oct 2007 18:38:31 GMT

Okay, here is the recipe I promised! First, I will write it down, then at the end I'll give a few comments you may or may not find helpful!

Recipezaar #104191

6 servings

2 hours (1 hour prep)

1 medium pumpkin

1 onion, chopped

2 TBSP vegetable oil

2 lbs ground beef

2 TBSP soy sauce

2 TBSP brown sugar

1 (4oz) can sliced mushrooms

1 (15oz) can cream of chicken soup

1 1/2 cups cooked rice

1 (8oz) can sliced water chestnuts

cut off top of pumpkin and thoroughly clean out pulp and seeds
preheat oven to 350'. In a large skillet saute onions in vegetable oil until tender
add meat and brown
drain drippings from skillet
add soy sauce, mushrooms, brown sugar and soup
simmer 10 minutes, stirring occasionally
add cooked rice and water chestnuts
spoon mixture into cleaned pumpkin shell
replace pumpkin top and place entire pumpkin, with filling, on a baking sheet
bake 1 hour or until inside meat of the pumpkin is tender
put pumpkin on a plate
remove pumpkin lid and serve mixture
for your vegetable, scoop out pumpkin and serve

I suggest finding a pumpkin that has a pretty flat bottom so it sits still on the baking/serving dishes. Also more fat-than-tall as it has to fit in your oven! My pumpkin shell was a good inch thick and took an hour and a half to cook til tender.

It was a little bland. Definately needed salt, and probably other seasonings but I'm not good at knowing what might work well. I think I'd add carrots for color and variety, it's all pretty 'brown'. Maybe even some peas. We want to try wild rice next time, as well as using ground turkey instead of beef (we just don't eat much beef).

From another recipe I got the idea to rub the inside of the pumpkin shell (before adding filling) with brown sugar... my family did not even want to try the pumpkin, but they did and ended up loving it!

This is a weird recipe, in that the amounts of canned stuff is not how it is sold, at least not in my store! Like, the average can of soup is 10 oz, not 15; the big cans are like 26 oz. Water chestnuts came in 5 oz cans, not 8oz. ....maybe it's different where you live!

I hope you try this and have as good luck with it as I did! We had the table decorated with fall leaves, gourds and indian corn, so it was really fun to have the pumpkin as the 'centerpiece'!

Mama's Midlife Mire: Food and drink

Dinner in a Pumpkin ~ Recipe