Earlier this year I first saw this meme.
I’ve been making chicken stock for several years. But this was the first time that I ever heard that you could make vegetable stock with pumpkin guts!
My childhood is filled with roasting the seeds, and sometimes using the flesh. But it was more convenient for my parents to buy the canned pumpkin and make pies from that. It wasn’t until I got married that I started making my own pumpkin puree, with the flesh, and make my pies completely from scratch.
But always, the guts got thrown out.
Of course when I saw that you can make a broth out of the guts, of course I had to give this a whirl!
After separating out everything (seeds from guts, and roasted flesh from skin) the only items that went to the compost heap were the stems and skin. The flesh was pureed down to dehydrate for freezer saving pumpkin puree. My anticipation was met with the roasted seeds. The seeds from 4 sugar pumpkins were all eaten before 36 hours. And the bowl of guts, I tossed all that into my Instant Pot.
Also tossed into my pot were a couple sprigs of dried rosemary and sage, my freezer vegetable scraps (parsley and cilantro stems, onion and garlic skins), and I had some green (spring) onions that lost their freshness.
Word of Caution: skip the green onions! They caused a problem and I will come back to that in just a minute.
After I filled my pot up to its max line, I ran the pressure cooker for 3 hours.
Was the time a bit excessive? Probably. Recipes range from 15-40 minutes pressure cooking time. But here’s the issue I have always had with store bought vegetable stock (or even for restaurant vegetable stock) is that broth is bland and adds nothing to the soup. So I chose the long cook time to extract all the flavor I could out of the vegetables. And anyone talking about cooking vegetables too long, the only concern is your vegetables breaking down, becoming mush and all the nutrients wasting away into the water. So feel free to go light on time or extract away.
Once time was up, I fell in love with the rich brown stock. It was so beautiful!
And then the flavor….
I have never tasted anything so bitter in my entire life. I’m being completely honest with you that this was entirely worthy of tossing down the sink drain. (Stick with me because I did resuscitate life back into this complete failure.)
What Caused the Bitterness?
After I put the broth away for the night, I did some research. The focus of my search was on all the foodie and culinary sites to find out how all the professionals fix bitter dishes.
First I drew personal comfort that all my instincts had kicked in, because I did use the professional tricks to save the vegetable stock.
It wasn’t until I came to one of the final site pages that I finally got the answer to my question–What Caused the Bitter?
Green Vegetables!
Green vegetables are the culprit behind bitterness taking over a dish. And that’s what killed it for me in this particular instance. I did use the same amount of parsley and cilantro that I use in my Chicken Stock. But on top of my usual I added the rosemary and sage. And the ingredient that signed the death certificate was the green onions.
Why do I share my failure with you?
Why not?
While I’m teaching others in the kitchen, I’ve had a few people who felt conscientious about always making mistakes in the kitchen. And I tell them every time, “I’d rather you make mistakes in this space, rather than make them alone at home. Here I can help you. And if I don’t know the answers, I know where to find them and I’ll get back to you.”
I grew up making mistakes in the kitchen. My dad helped me through the mistakes. And I also know the feeling of making mistakes alone in the kitchen. Can you pull yourself out of those alone mistakes? Definitely! But there is a huge amount of comfort knowing that you have no judgment help. The no judgment help may let you make your mistakes, knowing you can pull yourself out of it. Or they can help you by giving you a heads up.
Sometimes the kitchen mistakes teach you skills that you may or may not ever learn.
So yes! I firmly believe that it’s okay to make mistakes in the kitchen. And I have no shame in making them myself. It’s one more bit of information I get to pass on to others. Like in the instance of talking someone through vegetable stock, I can now tell them ahead of time to be stingy with the greens that you add. Because if you choose to be generous, be prepared to combat bitterness.
How did I save this Vegetable Stock?
The short answer is that I raided my generously supplied spice cupboard!
Even though it wasn’t the natural first choice, I grabbed salt first. When I tell you that the bitterness was strong, it’s a massive understatement. There was no flavor other than bitter. No pumpkin, no rosemary, no cilantro…absolutely NOTHING but bitterness.
If you’ve listened to enough cooking shows, you will always hear the professionals tell the contestants, “Use salt! It draws our and enhances the flavor.”
And it is absolutely true!
I went from tasting nothing but bitter to actually tasting some minor notes of the vegetables.
There is always the possibility of creating a salt bomb, which is a death knoll you can’t come back from. So while I was liberal with the salt, I did show restraint and moved on to a new trick.
Next I wanted to add some sweetness. But I wanted to avoid sugar if possible. My butternut squash and mushroom (umami flavor profile that acts very similar to countering with salt) powders were what I grabbed next. Butternut squash is my “seasoning” of choice when I want to add sweet without adding sugar. Unfortunately the squash could only help so much. It wasn’t nearly enough to counter to the bitter. So I did add a conservative measure of sugar. And in this level of face smashing bitterness, you are definitely going to need to add some sugar. There was a world of difference even with the little that I added.
Still this was not enough.
What is another cooking trick to lift hidden flavors to the forefront? Acid.
I’m sure you’ve seen shows, such as Chef Ramsey, where the chef always advised and praises lemon juice for lifting dishes to a new level. This is also true!
Normally I don’t keep lemon in my kitchen because I usually always lose citric produce when it’s only there for cooking. For that reason, I keep food grade citric acid in my pantry. You sprinkle in a little citric acid and you have the lemon lift without having to toss rotten lemons.
So I added 1 tsp. of citric acid in the nearly 2 gallons of vegetable stock. I tell you this measurement because I want you to know that you really need to use citric acid sparingly because it is much stronger than squeezing a lemon in your stock. So please be careful with this ingredient.
The good news is that I came to a stopping point for salvaging this vegetable stock. The bitterness went from being the only flavor to being a minor flavor that could be overlooked. When I had my husband try the stock, he had no clue that I had an issue with bitterness. In fact, he said he didn’t taste bitter. He thought my rosemary was a touch too strong–but that’s another correction I need to fix before I go public with a legit recipe for pumpkin gut vegetable stock.
Another piece of good news… this vegetable stock is by no means boring or bland. In fact, it’s quite complex and I still want to tweak this one when I go and crack my pressure canned stock for a future dish. If it’s fish or chicken based, I’ll leave the citric forward flavor as is. But if I go to make a sauce with it for my mushroom pasta or pumpkin ravioli, I might have to add some more salt to touch down that citric acid a bit.
Moving forward….
Limit the amount of greens you add to your vegetable stock LOL! (I hope you’re laughing with me, because I’ve now come to the place where I can laugh about this kitchen mistake. And it could be great to hear some friendly laughs with this story telling too.)
I have enough pumpkins to gut and have two more tries to making a pumpkin gut vegetable broth that is palatable and shareable for next year’s pumpkin harvest.
Don’t be afraid to try new things and embrace the things that go wrong. If it’s not charred and burnt beyond recognition, there is the possibility you can bring your dish back from the grave.
OR
Maybe you have a stack of recipes that sounded good but were just too bland. Using the above chart for how to tweak flavors can give life to a bland and otherwise forgettable dish into something you want to cook again.
Let me know your thoughts below!
Feel free to share your own kitchen mistake stories below. Or even more importantly, share your favorite anything pumpkin recipe. I’m a pumpkin pie junkie that has been branching out into other pumpkin areas. I’d love to hear what you have up your pumpkin sleeve.
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