HOWTO bake porridge in a pumpkin

I am a stone oatmeal fiend. I get up extra early every morning just to make my special oatmeal for the family. Also, I love pumpkins. So when I saw this recipe for cooking oatmeal inside a sugar pumpkin, with optional kid-involvement, I began to dribble and drool copiously.

Preheat oven 375 degrees. Start by carefully cutting the top off your pumpkin and cleaning the insides out. (Save the seeds for later - recipe to come!) Combine all remaining ingredients (except the sugar for sprinkling and milk for splashing) in a large bowl. Stir well and divide batter evenly between the two pumpkins. Sprinkle lightly with brown sugar. Place both pumpkins on a cookie sheet and bake for 45 mins to an hour or until pumpkin is soft enough to scoop and oatmeal is done. After it was done, we added a splash of milk.

Baked Pumpkin Oatmeal (via Craft)

I write books. My latest is a YA science fiction novel called Homeland (it's the sequel to Little Brother). More books: Rapture of the Nerds (a novel, with Charlie Stross); With a Little Help (short stories); and The Great Big Beautiful Tomorrow (novella and nonfic). I speak all over the place and I tweet and tumble, too.

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RedSun

Pumpkins may very well be the duct tape of vegetables. They’re used in recipes for everything from coffee and ice cream to potatoes and everything in-between.

Not a big fan of porridge myself but I love pumpkin seeds baked in the oven with ocean salt. I have loved it since I was a kid, and even now I still look forward to it. I only let myself have it once a year.
Anonymous

This is a very old pioneer recipe. I’ve made these for my family in autumn for years. You can also use those small “decorative” pumpkins, for a really fun personal pumpkin treat!
Mitch

I’m partial to the nursery rhyme about the pumpkin eating cuckold who cooked his adulterous wife inside a pumpkin.

Put her in a pumpkin shell,
and there he kept her very well.
Bill H.

Hear, hear! I’m always looking for the next best oatmeal! Out with it, Doctorow!
Anonymous

I gotta try this!

We started growing pumpkins quite by accident a few years ago. We had purchased some pumpkins for decorative purposes on our front porch. After a while they rotted, so we tossed the remains in back of our house to compost. Next thing we knew, we had pumpkin vines all over our vegetable garden. Each year, we harvest ten to fifteen pumpkins.

We enjoy them all ways, skin and all: baked in pies, simmered in water stovetop, made into pumpkin pudding (just add condensed milk to soft-boiled pumpkin). And the seeds are delicious oven-baked with some sea salt.

What amazes me is how many folks think of pumpkins purely for halloween decoration. They display them, then throw them away without bothering to eat them.
Sapa

I’m going to do this it’s a brilliant idea
Anonymous

Pretty sure I heard about this on Richard Herring’s As It Occurs To Me podcast.
hipdadiddy

Guuhhh.

Hate to be a hater, butâ€¦ Makes a handy package for dumping into the disposal, I’ll give it that.
- cjp
  
  I’m with you. Reminds me that it’s a great idea to hollow out pumpkins like this for my Hallowe’en bash. You know, just in case someone get queasy on all that candy.
Anonymous

Get a small slow cooker and dump your oatmeal and water in the night before. Your oatmeal will be ready when you wake up.
MrMastadon

Come on now Cory. You don’t really think you can get away with mentioning you have a special oatmeal recipe without posting it do you? Please don’t make me beg…
Anonymous

We love steel-cut oatmeal too. Did you know you can cook up a huge batch and then reheat servings as needed in the microwave?
gerta

Stuffing a pumpkin with cheese is the bee’s knees: recipe here.
Stefan Jones

I gather discarded Halloween pumpkins, chop them up, bake them, and feed them to my dog. She digs the stuff.

I like oatmeal. I might just have to try out this notion.
PrettyBoyTim

375Â°F is roughly 190Â°C, for all of us sensible folks who prefer SI units…
MauiMaker

Sounds good, but i dont know about all the prep time and another 45 min cooking, plus cool down, etc. I want my oatmeal NOW!!

Simple twist on regular oatmeal I found one day when I discovered I was out of milk – after cooking up a big batch…. Use Cranberry (or cran/raspberry, etc) instead of milk. It sounds weird, but its very tasty!
Zadaz

The day I realized you could actually -eat- pumpkins rather than use them for art was a revolutionary day in my life. Damn they’re tasty. (Need to write up my pumpkin curry recipe soon.) They’re so frikking tasty that I want to make and eat this despite being unable to have a spoonful of porridge in my mouth without feeling ill. That stuff is entirely the wrong texture.

PrettyBoyTim: If you’re going to be pedantic, the SI conversion for 375F is 463.705556 Kelvin, not Celsius.
- PrettyBoyTim
  
  Hoist on my own petard!
Anonymous

PrettyBoyTim: There is nothing ‘sensible’ about using SI units
for everyday use – the Imperial System has been perfectly adequate and acceptable for hundreds of years. Leave the SI system to scientists and engineers where it should be used and
where it was originally conceived.

PS: My background is in Physics/Astronomy so I know the benefits of using both systems in their respective fields.