How to Carve a Pumpkin

It’s that time of year again, spooky season. Everyone loves to participate in the age-old tradition of carving pumpkins, but it can be a real hassle if never done before! The following will shed some (candle) light on a presumably simple activity, and how to go above and beyond with the cleanup afterwards.

To start, picking out the perfect pumpkin is half the battle. The key to this crucial step is timing. Stores will have beautiful pumpkins out for the whole month of October, but beware, these will be rotten and unusable by the time Halloween finally rolls around. On the other hand, waiting too long to go will ensure that pickings will be slim to choose from. Heading out for the store about a week before Halloween is prime time for picking the perfect pumpkin. A nice, round, smooth, tall, and wide pumpkin is the ideal candidate. This step determines how difficult the next steps end up being.

Following that once the pumpkin is brought home it’s time to break out the tools and pick the design. The design chosen should definitely reflect the difficulty level one hopes to achieve. Taking into consideration the variety of knives at one’s disposal is also a way to determine the design. Handheld serrated steak knives work great for big carving lines, like the ones that will be cut to open the top. In addition, a small paring knife is handy to have will small, intricate, or curved cut line if the design calls for it. Common table butter knives will not work for this project; pumpkins are simply too thick for a butter knife to cut through. Once the knife selection has been settled, the design is ready to be chosen.

Starting out with the serrated steak knife, cut a circle at about an inch width around the stem. Once cut, pull the now lid off and it’s time to start scraping. One hefty metal soup spoon is the prime tool for this job. To get a good grip and clean out these guts with ease, pinch the spoon head between the thumb and the outside of the middle knuckle forefinger. This allows for the head of the spoon to really dig into the sides of the inside of the pumpkin with a lot of pressure behind it. Scraping should really carve away at the inside walls of the pumpkin. Don’t worry about making the walls too thin because scraping off the inner wall allows for the knife to go through when carving a lot easier. The following step is only if you feel the need to go above and beyond with the cleanup. If feeling ambitious, the guts scooped out, separated for the seeds, can be saved, and turned into pumpkin pie puree. The seeds as well can be rinsed, cleaned, seasoned, and baked as an extra snack to toss into things like trail mix. If these are not of interest, they can simply be disposed of in the trash.

At this point, the pumpkin should have a lid, a design picked out, and the insides completely scooped out until the inside is light yellow shade. Once this is done, the time has come to carve the design. This step will be fairly ambiguous because of the vast array in designs that could be done. Sticking with the simple and typical design mentioned earlier, the carving can begin. A good tip is to grab a pencil and add a quick stencil of the design, so it looks the way one desires. Working from top to bottom, starting with eyes can give a good place to grip the pumpkin and a spot to put your fingers when cutting out the large mouth towards the end. The paring knife will most likely work best for the small cut outs like the triangle eyes and nose as it allows for more control and smaller, smoother, cuts. Once these have been carved and pushed out, it’s time to move on to the mouth. A cut out this size will mainly use the bigger serrated steak knife since it can carve out bigger areas and the mouth doesn’t have as many turns and small lines. Following the stencil, or carving at free will, the face should be all cut out, leaving a spooky and festive fall decoration behind.