Pumpkin Safety 101

This morning while perusing the season's first pears at the grocery store, I was stopped by a friendly young man who recognized me from the television. He told me that he had carved several pumpkins for Halloween this year, and was curious what to do with them now that the festivities were over. Well, my first thought was – Halloween was five days ago, what are you still doing holding onto the jack-o-lanterns? (I didn't say that to him, of course. I've been in enough dirty dorm rooms to know that the smell of a rotting pumpkin could easily go undetected for months among the stacks of molding pizza boxes and half-full glasses of now-sour milk.) But his comment did get me thinking. Sanitation is one of the most important courses that any culinary arts student ever takes. It is a course that shows students that cooking food properly really can be a matter of life and death. And though I will spare you the details (mostly because I cannot pronounce, much less spell, the names of all those deadly food-borne pathogens), I would like to address the topic in today's post. Or at the very least, share with you what I told the young man (whom shall from here on be referred to as young Mr. O'Grody in the interest of protecting the innocent).

First, I never recommend using a jack-o-lantern in a recipe. Especially, if that jack-o-lantern is five days old. Though it does seem like a good idea to rehash that jack-o-lantern into a pie (a suggestion that a baffling number of websites will try to convince you is a good idea), it can be quite unsafe to do so. The moment you cut into the pumpkin, you introduce countless bacteria, viruses, and parasites into the pumpkin. Those germies then start to feed on the sweet flesh of the pumpkin and proliferate. (Of course, bare in mind that most jack-o-lanterns are carved - at least in part - by young children who have recently picked their ears, their nose, and their who knows what else...)

Second, most jack-o-lanterns are illuminated by some heat-throwing light source, such as a candle or a flashlight. The heat thrown off by the light transforms your jack-o-lantern into a nice warm sauna for the pathogens' reproductive pleasures. In short, your jack-o-lantern becomes a maternity ward for all those snot-nosed germs. And in about 4 hours at room temperature, your festive pumpkin could contain enough bugs to make you sick. (And that's not to mention that most candle-lit pumpkins develop deliciously ash-tasting streaks of soot that make the pumpkin pretty well useless for culinary concoction anyway.)

Of course, cooking does kill many of these disease-causing germs, but not all. And as I always say – better safe than sick. So, really the best thing to do with that day-old (and certainly that five-day old) jack-o-lantern is to toss it onto the compost pile and use it to feed next year's crop of pumpkins.

Furthermore, jack-o-lanterns are usually carved from larger pumpkins that are far too fibrous for the traditional pumpkin pie. Generally speaking, when looking for a pumpkin to cook, the rule of thumb is – the smaller, the better. That 1-pound sugar pumpkin makes a great pie. That 10-pound hybrid makes a nice jack-o-lantern. And that 1,786-pound Atlantic Giant makes an excellent boat should you ever feel the need to paddle such an oversized gourd through frigid waters during one of those Pumpkin Regattas that have become so popular.

Thanks for the question young Mr. O'Grody!