Pumpkin season is in full swing! (Not to be confused with pumpkin spice latte (PSL) season, which began at the end of August.) I bought my first sugar pie pumpkin of the season a few weeks ago at the farmers’ market.
Usually I cook whole pumpkins in a pressure cooker in a mere eight minutes (!) but when I had my oven on recently to cook several things at once, I roasted the pumpkin in there as well. (To roast, stab it a few times and cook at 350°F for about 45 minutes or until you can easily slide a knife into it.)
After the pumpkin had cooled, I removed the seeds, set them aside, scooped out the flesh and ran it through my food mill to remove any stringy bits. If you don’t have a food mill, a food processor will work. I don’t find this step necessary when I cook a whole pumpkin in my pressure cooker as the cooked flesh is quite smooth.
With the purée, I can make pumpkin dal, pumpkin pasta, pumpkin pie, pumpkin bread… pumpkin whatever. A small sugar pie pumpkin yields a little over 2 cups of purée.
With this particular pumpkin, I made a pumpkin pie and with the bit of leftover purée, my daughter Charlotte made us sourdough pumpkin waffles for my birthday breakfast earlier this week.
I then roasted the seeds.
Eat the Seeds!
My kids have always loved these and look forward to them every fall. I think I learned to make them in elementary school after pumpkin carving in class one Halloween.
When I posted these on social media earlier this week, a few people asked if they needed to shell the seeds after roasting. You eat these casing and all. But you want to roast the seeds until the casing becomes deliciously crunchy.
For this post, I tossed the seeds in olive oil and seasoned them with homemade chili powder (sorry, the recipe is not on my blog), garlic granules and salt. Use any spice you want (even pumpkin spice I suppose!) or simply sprinkle them with salt.
Squash seeds also roast nicely, depending on the variety. Acorn squash, butternut squash and honey nut squash seeds all work well.
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
- ¾ cup pumpkin seeds
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- ½ teaspoon salt
- ½ teaspoon chili powder
- ¼ teaspoon garlic granules
1. Remove as much pulp from the seeds as you can. Don’t worry about getting it all off. You can either remove the pulp bits or rinse off the seeds. I like to remove the pulp to retain some of the pumpkin essence but rinsing requires much less time. Pat the seeds dry with a clean dishtowel.
2. Toss the seeds in the olive oil, salt and spices.
3. Spread in a single layer in a large cast-iron skillet or glass baking dish. I use cast iron whenever I can because it requires little effort to clean.
4. Bake at 350°F for 15 minutes. Stir. Continue baking for another 5 to 10 minutes or until the seeds have turned golden and crunchy. Test one for crunchiness. If it’s chewy, put it back in the oven for a couple more minutes.
5. Eat immediately or store the roasted pumpkin seeds in a glass jar after they have cooled.