The Best Ways to Carve Your Halloween Pumpkin

Last night, I set about brutalizing some pumpkins. First, I purchased the pumpkins. Next, I stopped by the dollar store to get a little kit to carve them up. The kit cost a mere 3% of what my three pumpkins had run me, so I was grateful for a deal. When I got home, I got to work, sawing into the top of one of my big squashes (for carving) and completely ripping apart another (for baking). Without thinking about it, I used a giant kitchen knife to get this done.

I should have stuck with that approach—because soon enough, the stupid little scoop that came in the kit had broken deep inside the pumpkin I wanted to carve and I couldn’t see well enough into the dark, guts-filled cavern to remove all the bits. That was tragic, since I like to bake with the carving-pumpkin innards, too, and it meant I spent way too much of my precious time straining and rummaging through stringy guts to make sure no one who consumed my cookies was inadvertently eating slivers of plastic scoop.

Do not make my mistake and buy one of these stupid kits. Do this instead.

Pumpkin carving option one: a big spoon

The guts I was able to scoop out with a metal spoon.
Credit: Lindsey Ellefson

After my little scoop broke apart, I scrambled to find something that could help me continue on my quest to de-gut my pumpkin. I found a big metal spoon and got down to business—and it went way smoother than it had been with the plastic scoop. Overall, I recommend a metal spoon for getting the stringy bits, seeds, and inner gunk out of a pumpkin with ease.

Pumpkin carving option two: a bigger kit

As a dedicated dollar-store patron, I didn’t realize you could get big kits, too, but Lifehacker senior health editor Beth Skwarecki educated me this morning, suggesting that anyone who wants to use a kit should get one like this. She says the bigger scoop is sturdier and more reliable, and the larger knives work well, too. She even called them “game changers.” Plus, they’re relatively inexpensive: The kit linked here is less than $20, so while it’s not as cheap as what you’ll find at the dollar store, it’s not a bank-breaker, either.

Pumpkin carving option three: a mixer

Just like you can use power tools to carve your pumpkins, you can also use them to scoop out your pumpkin guts. Attach a paint mixer or even a kitchen mixer to a drill, stick that deep in the pumpkin, and let the electric motor do all the work. Below is a video from Ace Hardware showing how that’s done.

Pumpkin carving option four: A non-pumpkin knife

All the kits, whether big or small, come with a knife of some kind. It might be little and useless; it might even be sort of big and sturdy. Doesn’t matter. Use a real knife. Use the kind of knife you’d use any other time of year for any other kind of kitchen project.

The most seamless part of my pumpkin-carving experience came when I hacked up my fresh pumpkins with a giant kitchen knife. With the exception of detailing a jack-o-lantern, you should be using a sharp, real knife when you’re dealing with one of these delicious and/or decorative gourds. If you don’t have a big knife, this might be a great time to upgrade. Consider this very sharp, very sturdy box cutter that will come in handy not only for slicing up a pumpkin now, but cutting up all of your holiday shopping boxes in the next two months.