Make a BPA-free pumpkin pie

What's better than making pumpkin pie with your family? No, not getting a store-bought pie and eating it in front of the TV. Making BPA-free pumpkin pie!

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PlentyMag.com

Mon, Oct 13 2008 at 5:35 AM

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Recipes, BPA

Photo: pbody

BPA-free pumpkin pie

What’s better than making pumpkin pie with your family? No, not getting a store-bought pie and eating it in front of the television. Making BPA-free pumpkin pie! Since the hormone-disrupting chemical known as BPA is found in nearly all canned food in the US, skip the canned ingredients this holiday season and use these eco-friendly alternatives. For Thanksgiving, we made this recipe from Diamond Organics, substituting fresh, homemade pumpkin puree for canned. We'll never do canned again if we can help it!

Buy a little, tender, organic sugar pumpkin at the farmers market, cut it in eighths, scrape out seeds, and steam or boil it. Cool, remove skin, and blend. Presto, puree! Not only that, but exactly the 15 oz. or so you'll need to fill the deep dish pie recipe above.

You can also use pumpkin butter, packed in non-leaching glass jars, from your local farmers markets or a pumpkin farm near you, which you can locate with Local Harvest’s handy search engine. Two good companies that make pumpkin butter are Muirhead Foods and Latimore Valley Farms.

Many pumpkin pie recipes called for canned evaporated milk. Anyone who grew up across the road from a dairy will say blech and tell you to use thick, heavy organic cream or soy milk, BPA-, hormone-, and antibiotic-free. Organic Valley has some truly scrumptious cream, widely sold in supermarkets, if you can't find some from a local dairy (see Local Harvest, above).

Vegans shouldn’t be left out of the cold. You can use sweet soy milk from Eden Foods, in BPA-free aseptic cartons, or use this pumpkin pie recipe that only calls for pumpkin butter, sweetener, and spices.

For those who actually like baking and not just the idea of baking, here are instructions for an egg-free, vegan pumpkin pie filling recipe from GreenerPenny.com:

Ingredients

3/4 lb. firm tofu
2 cups pumpkin puree (if you use pumpkin butter, taste before adding any spice/sugar)
1 cup brown or raw sugar
2 Tbsp vegetable oil (safflower, canola or corn)
2 Tbsp molasses
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp nutmeg
1/8 tsp ground cloves

Time Estimates

Prep time: 10 min

Cook time: 1 hr

Total time: 1 hr 10 min

Instructions:

Blend or process until smooth
add to pie shell; and bake for at least 350 degrees F for 1 hr., or until firm and knife inserted in center comes out clean.

Makes one pie

Win-win: One pumpkin pie from scratch, and another way to scratch BPA off your list!

It's a way to truly be in the moment. A slice of Zen. And a slice of pie.

Story by Rachel Brown. This article originally appeared in Plenty in December 2008. The story was added to MNN.com in April 2009.

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Comments: 3

GreenerMom Oct 13 2011 at 12:00 PM

If you don't have access to fresh pumpkin or time to prepare it, Trader Joe's organic canned pumpkin is BPA-free. I received the following email from their customer relations department today after inquiring about it: Hello, Thank you for contacting us, and we do truly appreciate your interest in our Trader Joe's canned products. In response to your inquiry, BPA (Bisphenol A) which is used in manufacturing the plastic (resin enamel) lining of canned goods, prevents spoilage. This is currently an

.... More

industry-wide standard, and is an issue for most manufacturers of food-grade cans and canned foods. However, work is currently being done within the industry to develop alternative, BPA-free linings for canned products. However, we are also exploring alternative packaging options wherever we can in an effort to put the feedback we are receiving from our loyal customers into play in a tangible and meaningful way. Our canned pumpkin products do not contain BPA linings, and we have also made recent updates to some of our other canned products so that they no longer contain BPA linings (such as our canned corn and canned beans, salmon, chicken and beef products, and most recently also some of our canned tomato products no longer contain BPA linings). We also do not have any plastic packaging with BPA in our stores. To be clear, currently some of our canned items DO currently have linings that contain BPA, including our canned soups, chilis, and some more acidic products. However, we would also be happy to address the specific question as to whether any of our canned products contain BPA on an individual and specific product basis. We do invite you to resubmit any specific product requests in the form of a new email to include the name and/or description of the product, as well as the UPC Code or SKU number, and we would be happy to address your inquiry. You can also stop and inquire with your store Captain or First Mate wheneve you are shopping with us. Again, currently all of our products and packaging are within food safety guidelines and regulations. However, we are also handling this issue in the same manner as previous matters of concern: we're listening to the feedback from our loyal customers and exploring options to put that feedback into place in a meaningful way in the future. We hope this information helps, and we do thank you for shopping with us at Trader Joe's. Sincerely, Hazel Trader Joe's Customer Relations

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Skye B. Oct 28 2009 at 3:03 PM

I never thought of stuffing and oven roasting a small sugar pumpkin, but this is definitely going to be the star of my next family meal (this weekend) http://bit.ly/2VU3fO