31 Days of Pumpkin: Day 25

I can't wait to share my latest pumpkin recipe with you!  I've been wanting to try this ever since my aunt sent me the recipe after discovering that I was going to blog for 31 days about Pumpkin!!  It took me this long to get up the courage to try it!!  I don't know why -- it wasn't that hard to make, and it is totally Delicious and Fun, and I highly recommend it!!!

Pumpkin Stew

Ingredients

2 pounds stew beef, cut into 1” cubes

3 TBSP olive oil or butter

1 cup beef broth

3 large potatoes, peeled and cut into 1” cubes

4 medium carrots, peeled and sliced

3 stalks celery, chopped or sliced

1 medium onion, chopped

4 cloves garlic, minced

2 teaspoons salt

½ teaspoon pepper

Bay leaf

1 can (14.5 oz.) diced tomatoes

1 pumpkin (10-12 pounds)

Directions:

• In a dutch oven, brown meat in 2 TBSP olive oil or butter.  Add beef broth, celery, onion and garlic.  Add salt, pepper and bay leaf.  Simmer for an hour or so.  Add potatoes, carrots, and diced tomatoes and simmer for 1-2 hours.
  
• Meanwhile, wash pumpkin.  Cut out a 6-8” circle around the top stem.  Remove top and set aside.  Remove seeds and loose fibers (otherwise known as the "pumpkin guts!").  Place pumpkin in shallow baking pan.
  
• Spoon stew into pumpkin and replace the top.  Brush outside of pumpkin with oil or butter.   Bake at 325 F for 2 hours or until tender.  (Do not overbake!)
  
• Serve stew from pumpkin, scooping out some pumpkin from bottom or sides with each serving.

Yield:  8 -10 servings

The recipe suggested baking the pumpkin empty for about 30 minutes before filling it to be sure it was soft enough to scoop out when serving.  I followed that tip, but don't recommend it, because during the initial baking time my pumpkin cracked down one side.  :(  So, as you will see from the above picture, my stew was a bit dry, because most of the liquid seeped out of the crack and was in the bottom of my baking pan.  :( 

Fortunately, I still had some stew in a pot on the stove, because with my family size I doubled the recipe, but did not double the pumpkins!  So, after serving a few bowls from the pumpkin, I finally ended up scooping out the remaining stew along with the soft pumpkin and then poured off the delicious broth from the bottom of my pan and stirred it all back into the pot on the stove.  I really didn't want to lose a drop, because it was just that delicious!

I hope you'll give this a try!  It is really worth the little extra effort!

I feel like this will be a new fall tradition for our family!  I hope to make this pumpkin stew every October from now on!  It would be so much fun to invite another family over and make a huge batch of pumpkin stew!  The only problem is, I'll need a whole pumpkin patch of pumpkins to fit all the stew!!  ;)  

Let me know if you give this a try, OK??