Canned Pumpkin vs. Canned Pumpkin Pie Mix: What's the Difference? (2024)

FAQs

Canned Pumpkin vs. Canned Pumpkin Pie Mix: What's the Difference? ›

Ingredients - Pumpkin puree made from scratch contains only pumpkin, but canned puree may contain a preservative like salt. Pumpkin pie filling contains additional ingredients like sugar, spices, and thickeners. Flavor - Pure pumpkin puree has a slightly sweet, earthy taste.

Canned pumpkin and pumpkin puree are the same thing, and you'll often see the terms used interchangeably in recipes and cookbooks. Unlike pumpkin pie mix, canned pumpkin does not have any spices, sugars, or other additives. In many cases, the only ingredient is pumpkin.

Don't use pumpkin pie filling in place of pumpkin purée.

Every can of pumpkin pie filling has a different amount of sugar and spices and if you add it to a bread or muffin recipe you might get a very sweet and not-spiced-enough loaf. Try this instead: Buy pumpkin purée!

Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin

In this taste test, our Test Kitchen pros found that the biggest name in the pumpkin game does, in fact, make the best canned pumpkin on the market. Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin is a favorite among our culinary crew.

Pie pumpkins, also called sugar pumpkins, usually weigh 1 to 6 pounds. Their flesh is denser and sweeter that the bigger ones, which are called carving or jack-o'-lantern pumpkins. The biggies have a moister, softer interior with a bigger seed cavity, and the flesh tends to be stringier.

Canned yams or sweet potatoes can also be used in place of canned pumpkin puree. It's a simple swap to make. Just drain the sweet potatoes and use them in the same proportion as the canned pumpkin. Sweet potatoes and pumpkin do taste a little different, of course, but the texture and color are very similar.

There isn't much of a difference between canned pumpkin and fresh pumpkin puree, and looking at the list of ingredients on the back of the can will tell you that. It will probably just say pureed pumpkin or steamed pumpkin puree.

Sugar Baby Pumpkin

Also known as Sugar Pie pumpkins, these thin-skinned squash are smaller (4-8 lbs.) and have a sweet, dense flesh with a fine-grained, smooth texture. The cooked flesh is a bit drier, which makes a great pie filling.

It's 100% pumpkin purée, with no added sugar or additives.

Libby's, the quintessential canned pumpkin brand, uses a proprietary strain of the Dickinson pumpkin variety in their product, which is also often called a Dickinson squash. On Libby's website, it states that their product is 100 percent pumpkin.

Why is pumpkin pie not made with pumpkin? ›

Compared to other members of the gourd family, pumpkins — the standard orange sort we tend to picture at the mention of the word — have a lot more water in their flesh, more stringy fibers, and less natural sweetness, making them sadly inferior for baking.

Homemade Pumpkin Pie Ingredients

For the filling: cooked pumpkin, evaporated milk, eggs, brown sugar, cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, salt.

The pie is generally flavored with pumpkin pie spice, a blend that includes cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg, and cloves or allspice. The pie is usually prepared with canned pumpkin, but fresh-cooked pumpkin can be used.

What is Pumpkin Puree? It is the roasted and blended flesh of the pumpkin, with the skin and seeds removed. Fresh pumpkin puree will be a very different color, texture, and flavor, compared to canned pumpkin.

By comparison, a 3-pound pie pumpkin will likely give you enough puree for a recipe that calls for a can of pumpkin. After cooking and draining a pumpkin, this is about what to expect from a typical cooking pumpkin transformed into fresh pumpkin puree: 2½ pound pie pumpkin = 1¾ cups puree.

As it turns out, even though pumpkin purée makers write pumpkin on the can, it's actually a strain of Dickinson squash. And the closest produce relative to it isn't even pumpkin. It's butternut squash.