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You may have heard that the purée in your canned pumpkin isn't the gourd you think it is. No matter, it still makes a delicious pumpkin pie. For our latest taste test, we tried nine varieties of canned pumpkin and determined the best for pie to be what America has trusted for years: Libby's. For our methodology and the full list of pumpkin purées we tasted, scroll to the bottom of the page. First up, the rankings!
Our favorite canned pumpkin: Libby’s
Libby's won our test hands down. A key feature was its texture—it was far thicker than most of the other brands we tried. Our primary test for the purées was to make an easy-but-elegant pumpkin mousse from an archive Thanksgiving menu. Many of the canned purées were watery—and while that didn't really detract from the final texture of the mousse, there was little actual pumpkin flavor to be detected. One purée was thicker than Libby's, but it ended up being too thick: it was so condensed that it was practically gelatinous, and the resulting mousse was starchy and unappealing. Libby's, however, yielded a wonderfully creamy mousse with a backbone of pumpkin flavor highlighted by sweet spice and vanilla.
Although it didn't nab a top spot (likely because it was so grainy), we also enjoyed Libby's organic offering. If you'd like to go organic, make sure to strain your pie filling through a fine mesh sieve (or use a rubber scraper to push the pure pumpkin through before mixing it in).
Buy It: Libby's 100% Pure Pumpkin, $2 for a 15-ounce can at Target
The best organic canned pumpkin: Thrive
Our top organic pick went to Thrive Market's store brand. It's looser than Libby's, but that didn't detract from its flavor. It was also a nice shade of burnt orange—darker even than our winner—which made for the most appetizingly hued mousse of the lot.
Buy It: Thrive Market Organic Pumpkin, $2 for a 15-ounce can for members of Thrive Market
What we were looking for:
We set out to find 100% pure pumpkin purée. But we're just like you: before testing, we accidentally bought one can of prepared pumpkin pie filling instead of purée. Read your labels carefully, people! Once assured that all cans listed pumpkin as the sole ingredient (and one that contained butternut squash because we wanted to see if we could be fooled—spoiler alert: we could not), we whipped up nine batches of spiced pumpkin mousse. We made some changes to the recipe, like skipping the nutmeg and reducing the cinnamon, in order to hone in on the flavor of the pumpkin. We also skipped the step of sieving the mixture because we wanted to test how well each purée incorporated into the mousse. (For the record, if you have the means, you should not skip this step when making a mousse or a pie—it makes the whole thing more tender, creamy, and delicious.) In the end, we wanted a mousse that tasted strongly of pumpkin rather than serving as a vehicle for spice flavor. We also wanted a pleasing orange color—some purées were very yellow, others had an unappealing grayish hue.
How we tested:
I'm not a monster, so I didn't make my colleagues eat plain pumpkin straight out of a can. I made the mousses in the afternoon and chilled them overnight, then placed them in unmarked containers for a panel of Epicurious staffers to taste blindly and in no particular order. No distinction was made between organic and non-organic products during testing.
The other canned pumpkins we tasted:
In alphabetical order:
