Ina Garten Recommends This Pumpkin Puree Brand (Martha Stewart Loves It, Too)

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It's a good rule of thumb that homemade food is better than processed, and the more homemade it is, the better. But as fall descends and so too does the seasonal flood of pumpkin recipes, think twice before trying to purée a pumpkin yourself. The canned stuff is perfectly good, and Libby's is the brand that culinary icon Ina Garten recommends.

As she once explained in an interview with Williams Sonoma, canned purées are made with a different type of pumpkin than the big orange gourds we visually associate with autumn. Dickinson pumpkins are beige, dense, and rarely seen at grocery stores, but other pumpkins won't produce the flavor people expect from pumpkin foods. Yet, even if you got your hands on one, it still wouldn't be enough.

Unlike other brands, Libby's uses an exclusive cultivar of the Dickinson pumpkin, meaning the flavor and texture of Libby's purée are unlike anything else you can buy or make. That's why, even though Martha Stewart might have some reservations about Garten's "store-bought is fine" philosophy, they both agree on Libby's canned pumpkin purée. And if that somehow wasn't enough, Libby's is also the top choice of experts at Food Network, America's Test Kitchen, and Bon Appétit magazine.

Libby's purée enjoys widespread approval from culinary celebrities, test kitchens, and home cooks alike, but it's not the only good option out there. In our taste test of canned pumpkin purées, Good & Gather took top honors for its fresh taste and mellow sweetness. However, a Target store brand will never match the near-universal availability of Libby's, which our taste tester also said had "one of the richest textures and deepest colors" of all the brands.

"Best" is ultimately a matter of preference (even if many prefer Libby's), but brand notwithstanding, there is one vital thing to know about this autumnal ingredient: pumpkin purée and pumpkin pie filling are not the same thing. They are often labeled similarly and sold next to each other, but canned pumpkin pie filling contains seasonings, sugar, and other additives that make it a ready-to-bake pie filling. Canned pumpkin (which may or may not include the word "purée") is just pumpkin, nothing else.

The difference between the two is especially important to Ina Garten, who once admitted on her Substack that "I've never really loved pumpkin pie." Instead, Garten's favorite use for pumpkin purée is in her pumpkin spice cupcakes with maple frosting recipe, where the purée helps keep the cake luxuriously moist.