Is There a Perfect Way to Roast Pumpkin Seeds?
The Cars 108 staff carved pumpkins earlier this week, and everyone made fun of me for picking through all the pumpkin guts to pull out the seeds. I can't help it, I love to roast them!
I have always just rinsed them off, covered them in salt, and threw them in the oven until they were crispy. This year, I decided to turn to my not so secret baking weapon, Pinterest. I actually found quite a few different recipes for roasting pumpkin seeds. Some of them required you to soak them in salt water before you baked them, others required you to boil them for 10 minutes. I chose two different recipes to see if I could roast the perfect seed.
I started by rising all the pumpkin seeds very well under cool water. This step is important because if they aren't cleaned off they won't crisp up as nicely.
Then I split the seeds in half and started on recipe 1. This recipe says to boil the seeds for 10 minutes before baking them.
Once they have boiled for 10 minutes, you strain the seeds and put them in a bowl with 1 or 2 teaspoons of olive oil and salt. Full disclosure, I used more salt then they said two in both recipes. Isn't that why we eat pumpkin seeds, for the salt?
For recipe 2, I mixed the seeds with 1 tablespoon of melted butter, and again more salt then they suggested.
I spread each batch out on a different cookie sheet lined with tin foil, then put them in a 325-degree oven for 35 minutes.
Once they were about halfway through baking, I did flip them around on the pan to make sure they crisp up.
Once the 35 minutes was up, I pulled them both out, and on first glance, they looked the same. They both appeared to be crispy and covered in salt.
Aaron and I tried them last night and couldn't really tell a difference in the two recipes. I also didn't think they were any better than when I just rinsed them off, covered them with salt, and threw them in the oven until they looked done.
I brought them to work today and did a small taste test. One person said they tasted the same. George liked recipe two better (the one with butter), and the other three people liked recipe one better. One comment was that with recipe one, you can taste the salt quicker than you can with recipe two.
My end conclusion is that roasted pumpkin seeds are delicious. It doesn't really matter if you boil them, soak them, cover them in butter, or just bake them, as long as they are crispy and salty they are good.