How to Make Pumpkin Powder?

It is pumpkin season, and you find yourself submerged with pumpkins? Why not transform it in pumpkin powder? You’ll be able to preserve it for a long time and use it to make delicious backpacking meals. And you don’t even need a dehydrator to do so! It does require some preparation, but it is so worth it!

Here is how you make pumpkin powder:

1. If you have fresh pumpkin*, peel it and cut it into cubes. Then, cook it with steam or boil it without fat and purée it.
2. Cover cookie sheets with parchment paper.
3. Spread a thin layer on these cookie sheets. The pumpkin purée should not be thicker than ¾ cm (⅓ inch).
4. Use a dehydrator if you have one. Otherwise, put in the oven at 180 F (82 C) until the purée is entirely dry. Depending on the thickness and the type of oven (traditional or convection, it can take 6 to 10 hours.
5. Let cool down the purée.
6. Using a clean coffee grinder, make a powder with the pumpkin layers.

Yield: 400 ml of purée makes around 80 ml of pumpkin powder. This means that when you use 7.5 ml of pumpkin powder in recipes, it is the equivalent of 37.5 ml of pumpkin purée.

*If you don’t have access to fresh pumpkin, don’t worry, you can always use canned pumpkin purée to make powder.

Gen Masson, MSc, RD, CD