Pumpkin curry is best described as a stewed green pumpkin in a spicy fragrant yellow curry sauce. It is a type of yellow curry that is creamy, fragrant and saucy texture also very flavorful. It can be consumed on its own or with a side such as bread or rice. Add a can of chickpeas to it for added proteins and convert to pumpkin curry with chickpeas. Imagine a creamy potato soup but much better. Perfect Sri Lankan pumpkin curry can be spicy or mild according to what’s your taste buds prefer, I like mine quite spicy with loaded hot green chilies

What is Sri Lankan yellow pumpkin curry?

Pumpkins curry is one of our family’s fall favorite.  We all love to go pumpkin picking and carve up a jack-o-lantern from a pumpkin as Halloween approaches. Other than that, there are many delightful dishes that can be prepared with this abundant fruit at any time of the year. May it be the mains like pasta sauce, soup, roasted or mashed pumpkins or desserts and breakfast goodies like pumpkin bread and cookies or waffles, possibilities are endless.

Abundant, frugal, healthy, and flavorful much versatile for anything you might want to make. I feel like pumpkins are much of an underrated vegetable restricted to making desserts in most of our daily cooking. We like to mask this wonderful flavor with loads of sugar. Don’t get me wrong, I would love a good pumpkin pie, bread, or a cookie on any given rainy afternoon. But what I really crave for is good thick creamy yellow pumpkin curry with some rice that highlights that wonderful flavor for my dinner.

But here are some honorable mentions of my favorite pumpkin creations before we get in to making a pumpkin curry

Curry pumpkins and everything you need to know about it

Pumpkins come in a variety of flavors and colors. Some are orange or golden, white while others reddish, and green. In the tropics, where I inherited a liking for pumpkin curry, they are grown year around. It’s a year-around cheap vegetable you overlooked on a vendor’s shelf and buy from a roadside farm stand or vendor truck.

Even with 6 plus months of cold, we can find some form of squash thanks to supermarkets. One squash type for every recipe out there, a dessert or a main. One I am taking on today is the one and only side recipe with plentiful mildly sweet and savory creamy yellow sauce, made with large green pumpkin with pale yellow inside just for cooking a delicious pumpkin curry.

Most of the pumpkins I find here are on the sweeter side for curries. However, cheese pumpkins or green and Japanese varieties are a good fit because they are nuttier and less sweet. The ideal pumpkin for the curry we are making today would be a 3 to 4 lb in weight and not too sweet or over ripe. I like to keep a little bit of pumpkin skin intact in my curry as well, whenever I can get organic pumpkins. Alternatively, you can buy already cubed or halved pumpkins in the supermarket as well. But if you undertake the daring endeavor of dismantling the beast of a big whole pumpkin, please check out the instructions below.

Before attempting to cut a whole pumpkin, be mindful to place it over a non-slip towel or surface. In the highly likely scenario of knife slipping or getting stuck inside and become immobile, use a kitchen towel and carefully wriggle it free first, without trying to keep cutting in the pumpkin. I have always seen Sri Lankan vendors use heavy carbon steel knives and use blunt edge of the knife to crack the flesh open not actually cut it.

If the the whole pumpkin can fit in the microwave oven, cook it for 2 minutes on high in the microwave first. It will help soften the skin little bit. Start near the stem on one side and punch the knife through until you hit the seeds and push the knife down to make a cut on the side all the way through. Pull the knife out and turn the pumpkin around to make a similar cut on the opposite side until pumpkin separates into two pieces. Scoop the seeds out and cut in to 2-inch cubes. You can leave the skin intact if you get an organic pumpkin without any blemishes or damage to skin. It will add more nutrient and fiber to the pumpkin curry.

Seasoning and aromatics that goes in to Sri Lankan pumpkin curry

This is another yellow curry recipe. The authentic version is creamy fragrant full of coconut cream and mild. A good sauce made with coconut and cinnamon notes blends perfectly with pumpkin flavor highlighted by sweetness of fennel seeds. It isn’t hard to a pumpkin curry from scratch but if you have a good yellow curry powder things do become easier.

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Sri Lankan Pumpkin curry recipe

Serving Size: Half a cup of curry over rice or 2 cups as a soup  

Cook time: 25 Minutes

Ingredients

• One green pumpkin
• Two cloves of garlic
• One-inch-long stick of cinnamon
• Two green chilies
• One teaspoon fresh ground mustard seed
• One inch size piece of ginger
• Handful of curry leaves
• One medium red onion
• Two Pandan leaves
• Two teaspoons of black curry blend
• 3 tsp of Sri Lankan yellow curry blend
• Two teaspoons of salt
• One teaspoon of fenugreek seeds
• 1 can of Coconut cream
• water to cook

Cooking instructions

• Wash the pumpkin and cut it into 2-inch cubes. Remove the outer tough skin with a chef s knife, if you decide to do so.
• Grind mustard seeds with salt in a mortar and pestle.
• Mix ground mustard, salt and yellow curry powder with water to make a spice blend.
• Slice the onion and green chilies finely and mince ginger and garlic finely.
• Inside a clay cooking pot, coat pumpkin pieces with the seasoning blend and add just enough water to cover when cooking. Add onions, green chili, curry leaves, ginger, garlic, pandan leaves and fenugreek seeds. cook until pumpkin pieces becomes soft and cooked through, in low heat for about twenty minutes. When pumpkins are soft add half a cup of coconut milk, cover again and simmer for another 10 minutes on low.
• Finish with a sprinkle of black curry seasoning powder on top.

How to serve Sri Lankan pumpkin curry

Pumpkin curry can replace red lentil curry or creamy jack fruit curry in any rice and curry meal. Also pumpkin curry can be blended and added as a mild and creamy pasta sauce, pizza sauce. Another one of my favorite meals with pumpkin curry is to convert it to a soup, with added chickpeas to it.

However, you choose to serve Sri Lankan pumpkin curry, It is wholesome, filling, and full of packed nutrients.  This child-friendly recipe is a good source of vital dietary fiber and vitamin A included with benefits of spices like turmeric, curry leaves, cinnamon, and ginger.

I hope you will try out this curry recipe this fall and will like it as much as we do! Let me know in the comment below.

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