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Pumpkin is king when it comes to Halloween celebrations. While carving it sets the scene for the celebrations, what happens when party time is over, and it's time to turn that toothy smile upside down?
The orange orb is easy to cook with, so don't become a statistic of seasonal food waste and instead put your pumpkin head to good use this year and upcycle it in the kitchen.
The flesh, seeds and the skin can all be cooked into delicious recipes, so why not learn a few tips to rescuing the whole pumpkin with a few simple cooking techniques.
Depending on the variety you can usually eat all of the pumpkins - except for its stalk.
First, who better to take tips on upcycling food from, than head chef Douglas McMaster from Silo, the first zero-waste restaurant in the UK who recently moved to London. He inspires with his roast pumpkin steak, pumpkin puree and cobnut pesto.
How to cook the pumpkin flesh
Pumpkin flesh is extremely versatile and can baked into cakes and blitzed into soups or mashed into side dishes. Here are a few recipe ideas to get you started:
Pumpkin Mash
Turn your pumpkin flesh into the perfect side dish in a decadently buttery and aromatic mash of potato and pumpkin with sage. Here's the easy festive recipe.
Pumpkin soup
Blitz your pumpkin's innards into comforting pumpkin soup, experiment with a drizzle of oil and cumin to add new heights of flavour.
Try this comforting fall recipe now.
Pumpkin Risotto with sage
Creamy pumpkin risotto gets a boost of flavour from fresh Parmesan cheese and butter-fried sage and caramelised pumpkin. You can easily serve it inside a hollowed-out pumpkin.
Here's the recipe.
Pumpkin pudding
If you've got a sweet tooth - head straight for dessert. With this easy pumpkin pudding recipe, you'll never want to waste any pumpkin flesh again.
Here's the recipe
How to cook the pumpkin seeds
Roasting pumpkin seeds gives them a new lease of life as tasty crunchy additions to soups and salads or simply eaten on their own as a snack.
Here's how to bake pumpkin seeds
How to cook the pumpkin skin
Depending on the variety of pumpkin, you can eat the skin too, especially in smaller varieties like onion squash, it's also a great source of vitamins A and C, iron and riboflavin.
Take the skin and coat it in oil and spices or seasoning and bake in the oven.
How to cook the pumpkin guts
Even when it comes to the stringy, slimy insides of the pumpkin, don't throw be tempted to throw them away but turn them into a pumpkin broth or light stock as a base for a soup instead, just add carrot, celery, vegetable trimmings and water.
Or, take chef JP McMahon's lead and try fermenting them:
