I don’t do pumpkin pie. I don’t like to eat it, and I don’t like making things I’m not going to eat, so…I don’t do pumpkin pie. BUT! I do love pumpkins. It’s a superficial love, since I mainly value them for their decorative and carving possibilities, but it’s something. In fact, I made the BF drive me all the way up to Yorktown Heights (about 30 miles upstate) to handpick my pumpkins this year. We went to a delightful (and ridiculously crowded) apple orchard, Wilkens Fruit and Fir Farm, where they grow their own fruit and firs, and they throw pumpkins from giant crates into a field for an “all-natural” pumpkin patch! Whatever, I was still pleased. A fake pumpkin patch is still more exciting than the pumpkin bin at A&P.
(Jon checking out the selection of mini-pumpkins)
So we carved them a few days back, and while I’m not quite obsessed-enough to carve out the insides and make a pumpkin pie, I did scrape out all the seeds to roast! They turned out SO yummy. I used a recipe (kinda) from All Recipes. I love these websites because there are tons of great recipes, but also because people can leave comments with crucial tips and suggestions that can make the end result better and my life easier. So here’s a mash-up of the recipe I looked at, and a comment by a pumpkin seed connoisseur, Tracy.
Roasted Pumpkin Seeds
Pumpkin Seeds (however much you can dig out!)Salt (or any other seasoning. The recipe suggests Cajun, which sounds kinda awesome, but I just used salt.)
Vegetable Oil or Pam spray
Preheat oven to 300 degrees. Smooth out seeds onto baking sheet. You can rinse the seeds if you want, but I left mine with a little pumpkin goop for added flavor. If you don’t rinse, just make sure you get all the strings and most of the gunk off of the seeds. Then coat the pan and seeds in either Pam or vegetable oil. Add desired amount of salt (or other seasoning) and mix. Pop them in the oven and cook for 45 minutes or so, taking them out occasionally to stir. Turn off the oven and leave them in for another 30-45 minutes while the oven cools. Then consume heartily.
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2 comments:
I had a friend suggest fried pumpkin seeds this year... so I decided to try it out and they were so good!
I heated a deep pot with vegetable oil over medium high and dropped all of the cleaned pumpkin seeds in at once.
(we had a pumpkin carving party, so we had 5 pumpkins.)
I let 'em rip for at least 5 minutes until I could really smell them and they started to turn a golden color. I drained them on a paper towel and sprinkled them with seasoned salt, but next year I'm going to also try using a brown sugar/cayenne mixture. Yum!
Those sound amazing! Yeah, I saw some recipes for making sweet ones, so maybe I'll try that next time. :)
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