I love the whole pumpkin process, picking out just the right pumpkin at the pumpkin patch, carving the pumpkin, playing in the squishy mess, cooking the seeds and, best of all, eating the pumpkin seeds. YUM!
Having carved our pumpkin last night, I washed and dried the seeds for baking tonight. Once again, I can’t remember how I cooked my seeds last year, so I went back to a Google search for the prefect recipe. If you’ve looked you know there are TONS of recipes, and they range from an hour of cook time to 20 minutes. So, modified several recipes to make one that worked for me. Since the end result was YUMMY, here’s what I did.
Step 1 – Wash and dry the seeds over night. I spread a paper towel over a cookie sheet and spread the cleaned seeds over the paper towel to dry.
Step 2 – Peel the seeds off the paper towel, yeah, they kind of stick.
Step 3 – Dump seeds in bowl with a heaping scoop of butter (I use Land o Lakes with Olive Oil because that’s what we eat). If you don’t want to use butter, I am sure you could sub for olive oil or maybe Pam. But I like the buttery taste. And while I use a heaping scoop, this is for a LOT of seeds.
Step 4 – Salt. This is a guessing game. I don’t like things to salty, so I stay on the light side, but you could go really salty. You could also add some other flavors here garlic powder, oregano, pepper, etc. But I like plain old baked seeds, so I stick with salt.
Step 5 – Spread out on aluminum foiled cookie sheet. (I don’t like to wash the cookie sheet.) Make sure you spread thin so everything gets cooked evenly.
Step 6 – Bake at 325 degrees for 10 – 20 minutes. I put mine in for 10 minutes, and then I stir with a wooden spoon to flip them around. Then I put them back in for 10 more minutes. At 5 minutes, I could suddenly smell the seeds, so I checked them. They were done well enough, I think the full 10 mins would have been fine, but they were good to go.
Step 7 – EAT!
I might like my special pumpkin seeds more than the Halloween candy. After all, I can get candy year round, but only once a year can I carve up my pumpkin and harvest the yummy seeds. Enjoy!