How To Cook a Whole Pumpkin in an Instant Pot (12-Minute Pie Pumpkin Puree’)

I really like my Instant Pot. No, no, I really LOVE my Instant Pot. It has made meal time from anything so much easier! My family also love squash of all kinds. It’s cheap (we just bought this giant one for $2 that lasted our family of 8 for 3 meals). But one struggle with squash is the effort and time it takes it takes to prepare squash, including pumpkin.

That’s where I discovered a WONDERFUL way to cook squash…specifically pumpkin, in an Instant Pot.

With this method, I could take a pie pumpkin (from our recent pumpkin patch pickin’) and have homemade pumpkin soup on the table in 30-minutes, start to finish.

Plus, a HUGE bonus for me was that I didn’t have to do any fancy and risky knife chopping, splitting and cutting. That’s my least favorite part of cooking squash – cutting into the hard shell to reach the core of any variety!

I have the knife and the time issues solved! Just use an Instant Pot!

And the better news, it takes about 12 minutes to fully cook a pie pumpkin whole in an Instant Pot, then toss in a blender and make a puree’ and you have nearly instant pumpkin puree’. 

Here’s how to do it:

• 1 whole pie pumpkin cleaned
• 1 cup of water
• 1 Instant Pot (mine is this one – it’s the biggest as my family is a family of 8)

Truthfully, I had no idea what I was doing. But I tested this a few time and found out what was best.

Here’s how to do it:

• Clean the pumpkin and break off the stem.

• Place the rack in your Instant Pot

• Place the pumpkin on the rack inside

• Add about 1 cup of water to the bottom
• Put the lid on
• Set on manual, high pressure for 12 minutes
• Once it is done, pull out the racks and set it on a cookie sheet to cool a bit before handling.

• Peel off the skin, cut in half, scoop out the seeds and threads

• Then manually make a puree’ with a fork, or stick in a blender, food processor or KitchenAid mixer to get the smoothness of the puree’ you desire.

I have done this now several times and it is perfect every time after this method! I can use this pumpkin puree’ in any recipe requiring canned pumpkin. I have also cooked acorn squash in 9 minutes (as they are smaller) with the same method and it too was PERFECT!

It really can’t be any easier than this. I will share my pumpkin soup recipe soon too! SO YUMMY! Have you tried this method before?