Hubbard squash
Cucurbita maxima · Squash
Top 10 pairings
The Hubbard squash is one of the giants of the winter-squash world — a heavy, tapered, teardrop or spinning-top shape, often the size of a small barrel, finished in an extraordinarily hard, warty, blue-grey rind (older orange and dark-green strains also survive). Beneath that armour-plated skin is its prize, a thick wall of deep-orange flesh that is sweet, fine-grained and notably dry — closer to a baked sweet potato than to a watery field pumpkin. Roasted, mashed, baked into pies or simmered into soup, it is above all a keeper, a squash bred to be hauled into the cellar in autumn and eaten slowly through the long northern winter.
Picking a good onedrag
Cured hard, just pickedSoft-spotted, weeping
Shop firmEveryday bestThe all-rounder: roast, soup, pie, curry.
StemHard and dry, cut short
Rind under a nailNail marks it, will not pierce
SkinMatte, one pale ground patch
Smell at the stemFaintly green, clean
These cues are Pumpkin's, and hold across its varieties; where this one differs, its own page says so.
What you get from one
70%
Edible part
952 g flesh · rind, seeds and stem out
1360 g
Weight each
each one
Keeping ittap a temperature
A whole one wants a cool room, not the fridge. Below 10 C the rind pits. Chill cut wedges.
50–70%
Humidity
Open and airy
Airflow