Here’s a yummy treat from the insides of your Halloween pumpkins (or any pumpkin, for that matter). Roasted salted pumpkin seeds. There are a few ways you can dry your pumpkin seeds for eating, but this is my favorite because it’s fast and makes them nice and crispy and the salt doesn’t come off when you bake them.
So get your pumpkins ready and let’s get started!
When you gut your pumpkins, sort the seeds into one bowl and the guts into another. When you have all the seeds, put them in a colander and wash them really well. They’ll be totally slimy. Try to get rid of all the little stringy orange bits that want to hang on to your seeds.
Now mix up a bowl of salt water solution. I used 2 tsp salt per cup of water (my bowl had 3 cups of water and 2 TB (or 6 tsp) of salt in it).
Mix it all together so the salt dissolves. If you’re using RealSalt, the minerals won’t dissolve. That’s okay, just let them sit at the bottom of the bowl, they won’t hurt anything.
Add your clean seeds to the salt water and let them soak overnight or 8 hours or so.
After the seeds have soaked, strain them out of the water and put them on a cookie sheet. Heat your oven to 400 degrees.
Stick the cookie sheet of seeds in the oven and set the timer for 5 minutes. You’ll be checking these and stirring them around so they don’t burn about every 5 minutes.
After about 10 minutes, you’ll start seeing salt residue on your pan.
After about 25 minutes, you may have some seeds popping in the oven. Yep, they’re done. If yours don’t pop, you’ll know they’re done when they’re a nice golden brown and crispy sounding when you stir them. When they’re done, pull them out of the oven and let them cool.
Store in an airtight container. Super for snacking and makes good use of part of those crazy jack-o-lantern guts. Enjoy! :)
Keep preparing! Angela
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I've never made mine like this but they sound delish!
I never have either. I never even heard of soaking your seeds. I just wash mine off, melt a couple tsp butter, mix that into the seeds,sprinkle well with garlic powder. Spread them on the cookie sheet and bake. Mine are usually a lot browner and crisper looking.Yummy!
Oh crud, I just remembered that I left mine soaking in a bowl in the fridge from a couple days ago. Think they'd still be good?
I haven't soaked them either – but will have to try.
Warm wishes, Tonya
Maybe this is a really stupid question, but it never seems to be covered anywhere. After the process is over and the seeds are ready to eat, do you crack the outer shell off and just eat what's inside, or do you eat the whole thing? Are they like sunflower seeds or peanuts where the outer bit is too fibrous for most people?
Jimmy-if I air dry them, I like to peel them and just eat the inside. It's really kind of a pain because they don't pop open like sunflower seeds do.
When they're roasted in the oven like this it makes the outer shell kind of light and crispy and I just eat the whole thing, shell and all. Much easier. Hope that answers your question. :)