How to Make Pumpkin Puree for Your Dog

I *love* cooking with pumpkin puree. Besides the fact that it’s loaded with nutrients, it also creates tasty and moist treats and entrees for our dogs. Often I use canned pumpkin puree (never pie filling which includes sugar and spices) but it’s easy to take advantage of the seasonal sales and buy REAL pumpkin to puree, too.

The best pumpkins to purchase for pureeing are the smaller pumpkins intended for eating rather than carving. Wash the pumpkin then get ready for the first step. The only difficult part of pureeing pumpkin is in this part of the process: cutting off the top of the pumpkin and dividing it into quarters.

You’ll notice that it’s John’s hand in this photo and not mine…

Cutting into the pumpkin takes some muscle (and I think the pumpkins I selected may have needed a little ripening still…they were too difficult for me to cut and I was afraid I’d slip and cut more than the pumpkin!)

Soon that task was done then John cut one pumpkin into quarters (we saved the other for another recipe for the cookbook!)

Next, I scooped out the seeds from each quarter, saving the seeds for another recipe!

The quarters went on a baking sheet and I preheated the oven to 350 degrees F:

The quarters baked about 45 minutes (the pumpkin flesh should be fork tender) then I removed them from the oven to cool before removing the baked pumpkin skin (and discarding it).

After removing the outer skin, I chopped up the pumpkin and tossed it in the blender, gradually adding water to puree the pumpkin to the consistency of baby food. I’ll freeze the what I’m not using today in ice trays so I’ll have it for future dishes for the dogs (and for quick little frozen treats for them, too!)

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Pumpkin Puree Recipe

Ingredients

• 1 small pumpkin

Instructions

1. Preheat oven to 350 degrees F.
2. Wash pumpkin and cut off top of pumpkin. Divide pumpkin into quarters.
3. Use a spoon to remove seeds from each quarter, reserving seeds to later wash and dry for future recipes.
4. Put quarters on a baking sheet and back for 30-40 minutes.
5. Remove from oven and cool.
6. Remove baked pumpkin skin and discard.
7. Chop pumpkin into cubes; add cubes to blender along with enough water to blend to the consistence of baby food.
8. Freeze puree into one-cup containers or in ice cube trays.

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