Pumpkin Seeds

It's not too late to make tasty pumpkin seeds from your jack o' lanterns!

Every year I try a new recipe for pumpkin seeds because I can't find the recipe from the year before.  This year I found a recipe on Pinterest that looked easy enough.  Here is my finished product!

I got the recipe from Simply Recipes

Toasted Pumpkin Seeds Recipe

Ingredients

• One medium sized pumpkin
• Salt
• Olive oil

Method

1 Preheat oven to 400°F. Cut open the pumpkin and use a strong metal spoon to scoop out the insides. Separate the seeds from the stringy core. Rinse the seeds.

2 In a small saucepan, add the seeds to water, about 2 cups of water to every half cup of seeds. Add a half tablespoon of salt for every cup of water (more if you like your seeds saltier). Bring to a boil. Let simmer for 10 minutes. Remove from heat and drain.

3 Spread about a tablespoon of olive oil over the bottom of a roasting pan. Spread the seeds out over the roasting pan, all in one layer. Bake on the top rack until the seeds begin to brown, 10-20 minutes. When browned to your satisfaction, remove from the oven and let the pan cool on a rack. Let the seeds cool all the way down before eating. Either crack to remove the inner seed (a lot of work and in my opinion, unnecessary) or eat whole.

The fun part, at least for the kids, is gutting the pumpkins.  I am girly girl and hate being sticky or slimey and to me the inside of a pumpkin is both. 

When all the guts are removed I put everything into a strainer in the sink and with water running I go through the seeds until all those yucky, orange stringy things are gone.  It really doesn't take very long.  Maybe 5 minutes.

I have never boiled my seeds before I had always just coated them and put them straight into the oven.  I must say I like boiling.  It didn't take that much longer and the salty flavor was more infused then just on the out side.

Never seen boiling pumpkin seeds before?  This is what they look like.

When they have boiled for 10 minutes take them out and strain them again and then pour onto a cookie sheet that has been lightly coated with olive oil.  The recipe says to bake for 10-20 minutes but mine baked for about 30 minutes.  I did it in 10 minute increments and stirred between each. 

MMMMM! They came out nice and crunchy and not at all chewy.

Hopefully I can keep track of this recipe for next year!

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