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Pumpkin pie using fresh pie pumpkins. It's not that hard, but it takes more time and means washing more dishes, and no one that I know of can tell the difference vs. a pie made using canned 100% pumpkin.
I think it depends on the squash you use. Sure, buying a cheap pie pumpkin or butternut squash at the store might not taste that much better, but a home-grown squash or good local squash can far exceed the flavor of canned pumpkin. As usual, a lot of cooking is about using fresh, good quality ingredients.
I hear what you're saying, but I also hear, "no, just do even more work!" Haha. As it is, baking a single pie is already more expensive than a single store bought pie, and the people I'm pawning my leftovers off to don't seem to know the difference.
On top of that, I live in a high rise in the middle of the city, so home-grown squash is impossible (I barely have space for a few window sill herbs), and anything "local" is going to be even more expensive. Just not worth it to me so I can have a few slices of pie.
yeah, that makes sense in your context - canned squash isn't so bad, definitely not worth making from scratch.
I'm in a suburb where I have grown squash in my compost bin and gotten a harvest that lasted me a whole year, and that squash was some of the tastiest and had the most colorful of any squash I've had. The squash was also essentially free, a waste product, and in that context it seemed worth it (at least in some sense). However, it does take time and planning and a lot more work, and as you're saying depending on who you're baking for they may not appreciate it.
In college we actually had a huge debate about this, spanning half a decade and involving around 6 separate bakeoffs. I can conclusively say that I cannot tell the difference between whole pumpkin and canned pumpkin. That said, the pre-made canned filling is garbage. I can smell that difference from across the room. I can smell it from among four other pies. It's like a completely different food product compared to homemade pumpkin custard.
For the store baked pies, it's the same. The bad ones use the premixed stuff and taste like sadness, and the good ones taste like pumpkin pie. For me, the thicker the pie, the better it probably is, and what really sets good pies apart from each other is the crust.
Yeah, I would never use the canned pie filling, only canned whole pumpkin, although I haven't done any side by side comparisons, and only have a slice or two per year lately, so I can't say quite as confidently that I could identify the difference.
As I mentioned in another comment, I actually prefer a graham cracker crust for my pumpkin pie, and I don't think I've ever seen that anywhere other than my own kitchen. It can be a little tricky to get the filling fully cooked without burning the crust, but I've found that chilling the crust until just before baking helps a lot.
See, I hate crust, so I don't really care about it. It's all about how good the filling is.
Usually the thick pies aren't that great to me, but mine comes out with a very light consistency so that's probably why.
Most store bought pies suck though and none of them use cardamom, which is really the key to a great pumpkin pie.
I love making pumpkin pie from scratch, but fuck doing the crust from scratch. Last time I did that it was super doughy cuz I tried to reroll it out after it didn't go into the pan right without chilling it beforehand.
Oh, I actually prefer a graham cracker crust for my pumpkin pie, and those are definitely easier than traditional crusts!