Roasting Whole Pumpkin and Winter Squash: No Peeling, Seeding, or Chopping First

This is a looong post so I’ll summarize it first.

• Roasting squash or pumpkins whole makes GREAT puree for making soups, pies, cakes and waffles—anything you make with puree.
• It’s 100% about convenience.
• Concentrates and caramelizes the squash for a deep-roasted flavor.
• Best for squash and pumpkins larger than 2 pounds though it works fine on all sizes of squash.
• IMO smaller squash like honeynut and delicata benefit greatly from seasoning before roasting (salt and olive oil), though it is easy and fast to roast whole and/or unseeded and seasoning after roasting was still just fine.

And now, the looong version. Grab a cup of coffee……..Take your squash or pumpkin, whole, and throw it into a preheated 400F oven and roast it until you can easily slide a knife into the thickest part of the squash. I had to stab it a few times before it was soft enough to my liking.

Once roasted, your squash is SUPER easy to peel and deseed. I tried this on several different varieties. I also cut some in half, without seeding, and some I left whole. These took anywhere from 30 minutes for the small half squash, 40 minutes for half a pumpkin, to 1 1/4 hours for the whole butternut squash. You just need to keep checking every 20 minutes or so.

Here are a couple of pumpkins I cut in half before roasting, shown before and after deseeding and peeling.  These are super ‘dark’ because the sugars in the pumpkin caramelized; they aren’t overdone.

This is a super duper easy, no drama preparation for pumpkins and squash if you want a puree. There is very little waste, no worry of cutting yourself, and it takes just a minute or two to peel and seed once roasted.

Roasting the smaller squash whole worked just fine. It was really fast to prep and cook and they were really easy to seed when fully roasted. I like the skin on the smaller squash so peeling wasn’t an issue for me but if you want to peel them it would be a breeze to do.

The biggest drawback for me, for the smaller ones was not being able to season the whole squash. IMO the smaller squash need salt, oil, maybe a sweetener or herbs. Next time I’ll halve the little ones so I can season them first…and dig out my waffle maker!