If you're not a meat eater, stuff with veggie mixes with dried fruits, mushrooms, fresh apples, pears, cottage cheese, or other vegetable stews. The filling is important, it can change and be seasoned with spices in different ways, but the feature of the dish is a pumpkin container.
Examine orange fruits, sloping unstable cut from below. For individual servings, choose small in diameter. Teardrops are often cut lengthwise, experiment with a specific variety. Consider weight - stuffed pumpkin baked in the oven with meat and rice is weighty.
Cooking time: 60-90 minutes / Number of servings: 2-3
Ingredients
- pumpkin 600 g
- pork pulp 400 g
- rice 200 g
- onion 1 pc.
- garlic 1-2 cloves
- chili 1-2 rings
- vegetable oil 2-3 tbsp. l.
- salt, pepper, bay leaf to taste
- greens for serving
Cooking
For the filling, you can take any rice, I have the most common white. Rinse in several waters to cook faster, leave in a bowl of cold water for 30 minutes or longer. Swollen quickly softens, suitable for cereals, broths, soups and garnishes. I prefer to boil the rice until cooked and mix it with the rest of the products in an edible state, load it inside the pumpkin and steam it additionally in the oven. But you can leave the rice raw or half-cooked, fill the pumpkin by about two-thirds, pour boiling water / broth in parts and wait for the swelling. The second way will take more time, since the pumpkin is not a ceramic pot or a cauldron with a lid, the grains soften more slowly in its walls.
So, we cook rice in the usual way, in boiling water, then we wash it.
Wash the meat, dry it and cut into small (or large if desired) cubes of approximately the same size. There can be different types of meat, chicken, turkey, rabbit, whatever you like and have. Separate the fillet from the bone, tough film, too fatty areas. I cook from pork tenderloin - always juicy, fragrant, meaty, not too greasy and easy to cut. There is no illiquid asset left, you just need to cut and put everything into action.
Like rice, we process the meat twice - first on the top fire, then in the filling, baking. We heat a wide frying pan to fit more at once. Pour in lean refined oil, after half a minute put the pork pieces. Fry in crackling fat for a couple of minutes, add chopped chili, garlic and onions. We mix. Meat juice often stands out, let it evaporate. Then you can fry until a strong golden brown, or you can only dry it slightly. But do not fry for too long, the meat inside will become tough, lose moisture and tenderness.
Divide a clean pumpkin in such a way as to save the top “hat” and a massive lower part for minced meat, remove the hard peel from the intermediate part. We chop the pulp quite large. We send the pumpkin slices to the fried meat and, having stirred, continue to keep on the stove for another 5 minutes. The pumpkin will be saturated with fragrant fat and will be tastier in the dish.
We shift the washed boiled rice to the fried platter, season with salt and pepper. Stir, be sure to try. Filling for stuffing at hand. If you need strong smelling spices, use them. My stuffing set is basic and minimal. Only rice, pumpkin, pork, onion, garlic, hot peppers. If you want, complicate the variation of pilaf. Add mushrooms, dried fruits, barberry to the listed composition. If you do not eat white rice, replace with other cereals. Sometimes stewed with buckwheat, millet, barley, bulgur.
Back to the pumpkin, here are the containers for roasting and serving. We do not damage the lower volumetric part, we protect the shell. From the inside, we take out the filamentous fibers with seeds. If you see that the cavity is small and you can’t physically fit a lot of filling, scrape the pulp. The wall thickness of half a centimeter is quite sufficient: it is strong, withstands long baking and the heavy weight of the filling.
We ram the “minced meat” and fill the pumpkin-blank to the top. Use a spoon to reach the raised areas and place the filling mixture firmly. We stick a bay leaf, pour in boiling water (or boiled meat broth). The volume of liquid is small, how much will fit. You just need to stew the pulp on the walls and combine all the flavors.
We transfer it to a convenient refractory tray, cover it with a “hat” and put it in a red-hot oven (temperature 180 degrees) for 30-40 minutes. Stuffed pumpkin is sometimes charred - rather, for decorative purposes.
Serve stuffed pumpkin baked in the oven with meat and rice, garnished with fresh herbs. Hearty, beautiful and delicious!
