How to Easily Cook a Whole Pumpkin in the Slow Cooker

While smaller 2kg pumpkins are extremely affordable right now (69p at Aldi, £1 at Tesco and the Coop), I thought I’d share with you my easy no-messin’ hack on how to cook one with no effort!

Of course, if you don’t have a slow cooker, you can roast one like I did a couple of years ago for this Syn Free delicious creamy pumpkin soup but you’ll need to be very careful with a sharp knife.

However, with a slow cooker, there’s only two things you need:  a slow cooker and a pumpkin.  That’s it!  You don’t even need any elbow grease!

For this, I used a smaller 2kg pumpkin.  But my slow cooker is probably one of the biggest ones available, so when you go shopping for one, you might want to take a tape measure with you, or eyeball it.

My pumpkin was 17cm tall pumpkin and 20cm diameter.  So for the best results, make sure you know your slow cooker’s internal dimensions.

The last thing you’ll want to resort to is trimming off the bottom where it gets in contact with the heat, otherwise that bit will be tough and unusable.  Slow cooking a pumpkin is best with the skin left on to retain the juices and slowly seep out when its ready.

So once you’ve slow cooked your whole pumpkin, just leave it to cool and cut in half with no effort!

You’ll also find the guts are far easier to scoop out too.  They’re great as a nutritious snack if you roast them (although not free on Slimming World) and the rest of the flesh is seriously like knife through butter.

Yes, it’s a much longer cooking method than roasting, but after just popping it in your slow cooker, you can get on with the rest of your day without keeping an eye on the oven.

If you haven’t eaten pumpkin before, I personally think it tastes very similar to a butternut squash.

As for recipes, well, you can turn it into soups, a base for a pasta sauce, mash or a puree for perhaps say a crustless pumpkin pie!

(I’ll be reporting back very soon with a new recipe using this method).

CAN’T MAKE IT NOW?  THEN HERE’S A PIN TO SAVE FOR LATER!

📖 Recipe

How to Cook a Whole Pumpkin in the Slow Cooker

Vikkie Lee

Here’s the easiest way ever to cook a whole pumpkin with no chopping involved!