Culinary Taste Test #1: Pumpkin vs. Butternut

Have you ever heard that butternut squash tastes more like pumpkin than pumpkin? Well that is just what I had to find out yesterday. I had also heard that butternut squash make an awesome pumpkin pie - was it true? Well after a couple of hours of cooking, cooling, pureeing, running to the store, etc. I finally had something that we could test. Here are the pros and cons:

Pumpkin Pros:

• Tasted like "pumpkin" since that is what it actually is!


• Had a little more 'watery' consistency - which could be a pro or a con depending on your taste

Pumpkin Cons:

• Far too often you cut open a very stringy pumpkin that takes too long to process and even then it still doesn't taste very good.


• Pie Pumpkins can be harder to find

Butternut Pros:

• Thick consistency which I liked, but not everyone else.


• Butternut is more predictable as far as stringiness goes.


• There are less seeds and they are easier to remove.


• Butternuts tend to be available almost year round.

Butternut Con:

• Thick consistency (described as 'gluey' but that could probably be gotten over if you added a little water to the puree)

The final decision: well, there isn't enough of a difference to go to a bunch of work either way. I will probably go with the butternut since I won't have the problem of stringiness and they just seemed easier to prepare. As a side note: I made the pie filling without the pie for my testing - sometimes I wonder why I even bother with a crust because the filling is so good by itself!