Thanksgiving Leftovers: Roasted Stuffed Pumpkin

Thanksgiving night we had friends and neighbors over for dessert.  It’s such a nice way to wrap up the holiday, a low-key evening with lots of sweet treats.  The conversation always turns to what we ate earlier in the day, followed by how we are going to re-purpose them for the next several days.

One of our neighbors mentioned a dish that was rice-based and baked in a pumpkin.  She didn’t know the details, it was someone else’s recipe but she did say she would check into it for me.

I’m impatient about these things.  I just brought my pie pumpkins in from outside since it has turned chilly here all of a sudden.  I wanted to do something with them today.  So I looked around on-line, found lots of stuffed pumpkin recipes.  Some sounded similar to stuffed peppers, some used lots of bread and cheese.  Some even used the grey, jiggly, condensed mushroom soup in a can.  Then it struck me, I have a fridge full of dishes that blend well with the flavor of pumpkin.

So here it is, an un-recipe of sorts.  Mine is different from what you may make as we have different leftovers.  What I can tell you is this is the tastiest way I’ve re-purposed our Thanksgiving leftovers.  We are fans of pumpkin crepes stuffed with leftovers, but this even trumps that.  Not only that, it was easy!

Roasted Stuffed Pumpkin

1 small pumpkin, top removed, cleaned out

Thanksgiving leftovers (we had mashed potatoes, cornbread stuffing, maple sweet potatoes, tofu roast and gravy)

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

After cleaning out pumpkin, place it on a parchment lined baking sheet.  Layer in your Thanksgiving leftovers, pressing down firmly on each layer to make more room.  I poured in a bit of gravy on top of every second or third layer to keep the ingredients moist.

For the last layer, sprinkle  a bit of stuffing on top if you have it.  It will get that terrific crunch on top.

Bake for 90 minutes or longer, depending on the size of the pumpkin.  It is done when the pumpkin is soft on the outside.  Give it a good poke with a spoon, you’ll be able to tell if it is soft.  It may also be starting to collapse a bit on the baking sheet. Because the pumpkin is now soft, this makes transferring it to a pretty serving platter problematic.  You may find it easiest to serve from the baking sheet.

You may either cut out slices of this to serve or scoop it out along with the pumpkin.  We drizzled Orange Bourbon Cranberry Sauce on ours.

And now I find myself wishing we had more leftovers…

What are you making with your leftovers?  I’d love to hear!