The first time I roasted pumpkin seeds, I burned the crap out of them.
It was heart-breaking, especially since I wasn’t convinced it was even worth the effort in the first place. All that seed cleaning and pumpkin de-stringing – I didn’t even get to enjoy the fruits of my labour. Hrmph.
Here is the part that no one told me about: The inner seeds cook much faster than the outer shell. I kept peeking in the oven and everything looked fine on the outside. Little did I know, the inner seeds were burnt to smithereens.
Well, thank goodness I didn’t give up after that first miserable attempt! My life just wouldn’t be complete without roasted pumpkin seeds.
I’m happy to say, the second batch didn’t just work, it blew my mind! The cup of seeds I roasted did not last long between the two of us. Every pass by the kitchen was an excuse to grab a crispy handful off the pan.
Today, I’m sharing my secrets for a fantastic batch of roasted pumpkin seeds. If you’ve ever doubted they were worth the effort or had so-so results, I beg you to try this one last time. Only I know it won’t be the last time, but the start of a life-long obsession. Watch out pumpkins, we’re coming for ya!
How To Roast Pumpkin Seeds:
1. Clean the seeds. The annoying-but-necessary task is that you have to meticulously clean the seeds until there are no signs of pumpkin guts. The best way to do this (that I have discovered from your comments!) is to plunk the seeds + guts into a big bowl of water and use your hands to break it apart. The seeds will float to the top of the water! They clean much faster this way.
Note: Some of you say that sugar pumpkin seeds yield much crispier seeds than carving pumpkins. I used sugar pumpkin seeds and mine were certainly super crispy!
2. Boil for 10 minutes in salt water. Using Elise’s method for inspiration, I added the pumpkin seeds to a medium-sized pot of water along with 1 tsp salt. Bring it to a boil and reduce the heat to simmer, uncovered, for about 10 minutes over low-medium heat. Apparently, this method helps make the pumpkin seeds easier to digest and produces a crispy outer shell during roasting. If you are short on time, you can totally skip this step! They will still turn out lovely.
3. Drain the seeds in a colander and dry lightly with a paper towel or tea towel. The seeds will stick to the towel, but just rub them off with your fingers. Don’t worry, they don’t have to be bone dry – just a light pat down.
4. Spread seeds onto a baking sheet and drizzle with extra virgin olive oil (I only needed to use about 1/2-1 tsp). Massage oil into seeds and add a generous sprinkle of Herbamare (or fine grain sea salt will do). Try to spread out the seeds as thin as possible with minor overlapping.
5. Roast seeds at 325°F for 10 minutes. Remove from oven and stir. Roast for another 8-10 minutes (if your oven temp is wonky, this bake time could vary a lot!). During the last 5 minutes of roasting, remove a few seeds and crack open to make sure the inner seeds are not burning (you don’t want the inner seed brown). Cool a couple and pop them into your mouth to test. They are ready when the shell is super crispy and easy to bite through. The inner seed should have only a hint of golden tinge to it. They should not be brown.
6. EAT! Remove from oven, add a bit more Herbamare, and dig in! Ah, so good, so good! There is no need to remove the outer shell; it’s quite possibly the best part.
I had no idea I was going to love freshly roasted pumpkin seeds so much. I love how crispy the outer shell is and how fun it is to crunch. They taste a bit like popcorn, but they are much crunchier, filling, and of course packed with nutrition.
Yes, pumpkin seeds are super healthy for you! They are packed with iron, magnesium, fibre, zinc, potassium, healthy fats, protein, and tryptophan (which can boost your mood and help you sleep). Vegans & vegetarians have been using pumpkin seeds for years as a natural source of iron. I think it’s just about my favourite way to get iron, next to Iron Woman Gingerbread Smoothies, of course. Be sure to pair it with Vitamin C to absorb the most iron you can.
7. Share with some very lucky people! (but chose them wisely…)
I promise you’ll never throw the seeds out again.
I want to buy pumpkins just to be able to roast another batch of seeds. And of course, make homemade pumpkin puree. I’m already looking forward to making some different flavour combos – maybe garlic powder, cayenne, rosemary, brown sugar or cinnamon, nutmeg, ground cloves, etc would both be nice to try out? I can’t wait to experiment…many ideas are a-swirlin’ in my…stomach.
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How to Roast Pumpkin and Seeds
Yield
4 cups flesh, 3/4 cup seeds
Prep time
Cook time
Total time
This is my go-to method for roasting a sugar pumpkin and its seeds at the same time! Most recipes tend to provide instructions on roasting them separately, but I wanted to come up with directions on how to roast them both simultaneously. And, luckily, I've discovered it couldn't be easier.
Ingredients
- 1 sugar pumpkin (2 1/2 to 3 pounds)*
- Extra virgin olive oil
- Pink salt, fine sea salt, or Herbamare
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 325°F (160°C) and place two racks near the centre of the oven. Grab two rimmed medium-sized baking sheets and line one of them with parchment paper.
- Fill a medium-sized bowl with water and set aside. Lie an absorbent towel onto the counter next to the bowl.
- Slice off the pumpkin stem and discard.
- Place the pumpkin, cut side down, onto a cutting board. Carefully slice the pumpkin in half.
- Scoop out the pumpkin seeds and flesh/strings and place it all into the bowl of water. The seeds will float to the top (like magic!). Using your hands, grab the big chunks of flesh and pick off any attached seeds. Place the seeds back into the bowl of water. Discard/compost the chunks of flesh.
- Use a slotted spoon to remove the seeds. Let excess water drip off and then place the seeds onto the towel. Blot dry (the seeds don’t have to be bone dry and it’s okay if there are some strands attached—they add flavour!).
- Spread the seeds onto the baking sheet without the parchment and toss with 1 teaspoon of oil. Spread the seeds out into a single layer and sprinkle with salt.
- Mist or spread oil all over the inside of each pumpkin half and then sprinkle with salt and pepper. Place each half cut-side down onto the lined baking sheet.
- Place both sheets into the oven with the seeds on the lower rack. Roast at 325°F (160°C) for 20 minutes then remove the seeds and taste test a couple. As long as the inner seeds aren't tasting burned, you can keep roasting them. I usually return the seeds to the oven for another 3 to 4 minutes. Remove the seeds and cool.
- Leave the pumpkin in the oven and increase the oven temp to 350°F (180°C). Continue roasting the pumpkin for another 12 minutes or so, until fork-tender. (The timing may vary based on how large and fresh your pumpkin is.) At this point you can slice it up and serve it as a side vegetable with your meal, or process/blend the flesh to make homemade pumpkin purée.
Tip:
- * One sugar pumpkin (roughly 2 3/4 pounds) yields about 4 cups (720 g) of roasted pumpkin flesh and 3/4 cup (75 g) seeds.
Omg i just made them instead of olive oil i used butter from this other recipe i got off the net cause i had No olive oil…dam they good…and my lady tell me to throw the pumpkins in the garbich,…kids love them
Angela, I’m working on getting the pumpkin seeds ready for roasting per your instructions. I tried something for cleaning off the pulp that seems to work pretty well. I put a handful in a bowl of water and mushed the seeds around with my fingers. Most of the pulp came away and sank or at least came off the seeds. I hope this helps you next time.
You have omitted a critical step. You have to dry the seeds, rub them and winnow them to get the cellophane-like layer off the outside, otherwise the salt does not penetrate the seed. After this, you salt them, dry them and roast them. I do 300 for 14 minutes with a toss half way through. I have made and sold hundreds of pounds of pumpkin seeds and the carving pumpkins are better. We grew 10 acres and you always had some with bad spots and we’d go through the field with 5 gallon buckets, a knife and a spoon. After we were done, the farmer next door got to run his small herd of cattle in, fertilized for next year.
Hey, here’s the easiest way I’ve found to clean pumpkin seeds:
–Start by using a spoon to separate the seeds from all the pulp around them.
–Place seeds in a coarse colander (big enough holes for the pulp to go through but not the seeds), and put that in a bowl of warm water, so the seeds are covered with water.
–Wearing a pair of exfoliant gloves, the knitted-with-abrasive-fibre kind that are sold for rubbing off your dead skin when you shower, rub handfuls of seeds between the gloves, letting them fall back into the water, and repeat for a few minutes, until the seeds are free of pulp.
–Lift the colander out of the bowl of water and rinse the seeds. Empty the bowl. Repeat the process if there’s still pulp on the seeds. And voila, clean pumpkin seeds in a relatively short time. Wash and dry the gloves and save them for next time.
*******
–I then soak the seeds overnight, let them dry on a mesh sheet (this “swells” them rather than sprouting them, but achieves a similar tenderising effect to boiling, without killing off all the enzymes in hot water). Then I marinate them a few hours in a combination of toasted sesame oil, sea salt, and either tamari or lime/honey marinade. If I want to keep the “raw” benefits, I then dehydrate the seeds til they’re crispy. But if I can’t wait that long, roasting them as recommended above works great too. Yummm! My new favourite snack!
This note is for cleaning pumpkin seeds. I like pumpkin pies and pumpkin/apple bread. I have been trying to make them (with little success) from home grown pumpkins. I good thing that came out of it was roasted pumpkin seeds. I grow miniature pumpkins at home so this may not work for world class pumpkins.
I can boil the pumpkins in a crock pot for a few hours to soften them. This takes off the outer membrane (so the pumpkin can be spooned out for the pie or bread) and loosens the guts from the seeds. Sometimes I just scoop out the raw guts from the pumpkin and simmer it on low in slightly salty water. This does the same thing. Then I wash the resulting seeds and the guts just peel away. Some seeds can’t be separated, so I just throw them away.
This method doesn’t completely clean the seed, it still has a pumpkin taste to them, but they are pumpkins after all.
Hope this helps,
Tired of TV Dinners
I just burned my first attempt at pumpkin seeds, so I googled recipes and was glad to have a chance to revisit your blog. (I love you chewy trail mix cookies.) I bought raw pumpkin seeds from the natural grocery store and tossed them in coconut oil, a little salt and cinnamon, 1 tsp cacao, and 1 T coconut sugar. But I baked them on 375 and didn’t know about the inner seed (great tip.) I’m still eating them burnt but will definitely try again on a lower temp. And for a savory variety, love the herbmare idea.
Pumpkin seeds are quite easy to clean.
I just did quite a few and the strings came off quite easily.
The trick is letting the insides of the pumpkin dry out a bit before you
try and separate the seeds. Just spread them out on a cookie sheet and
air them for a day or so. The strings come right off the seeds then.
Hi. I have these in the oven right now. I used McCormick perfect pinch vegetable seasoning. Not too much salt for this household. :)
To get the guts off, I rinsed them in water under the sink. Ran the water at over the seeds so it circulated them. The guts came right off!
Thanks for this recipe!
The best way to remove the seeds: Use a plastic food processor blade, and fill the processor bowl with pumpkin innards and hot water. Run for a minute, then pour contents into colander. The food processor really helps to separate the seeds from the strings.
Instead of boiling in salt water, I put the seeds into a small pressure cooker with the salt and water. My family likes a little more salt. Pressure for about five-seven minutes. It puts the salt inside the shell. Drain. Bake as usual. When the boys were kids, we raised pumpkins just for the seeds. The pressure cooker works well for homegrown sunflower seeds, too.
Great recipe, thanks for sharing.
D & Don
Don’t worry about pulling all the threads from the seeds. Just remove the major pieces and put the seeds (threads attached) into the water to simmer. Spread the seeds onto the paper towel and cover with more paper towel for 5 minutes. When you remove the paper towel from the top the threads will also come off with the towel. Any remaining will stick to the bottom sheets of paper towel as you pick up the seeds.
Hope this answers your question and a great recipe
Just wanted to say thanks for the recipe! Cooked them today for a previously pumpkin seed pessimist boyfriend that just ate the lot!
Hi all, this sounds yum but a lot of trouble to go to. I always pull the seeds out. Remove most of the pulp but am not fussed with some being left on them. Lay them out on a paper towel sprinkle salt over them. Sometimes I also put paprika. Put paper towel over top & let sit for 3 days. They naturally dry out & the shell naturally goes crunchy. Absolutely yummo. Fast, Easy & everyone loves them.
This recipe works with acorn squash seeds as well. Just pop them out of the oven about five minutes shy of the full 20 minutes. Delicious!
Hi
I thought I would try your technique for roasting squash seeds as I had seeds from three squashes from making squash soup. It seemed so laborious picking off all the little bits of squash stuck to the seeds and I nearly changed my mind. I rinsed as much off it off as I could but there was still a lot left. When I read that you have to boil them for ten minutes I thought…..why don’t I boil them before trying to remove the bits stuck to the seeds and maybe the cooked squash would come off easier. So that’s what I did. A lot of the squash just fell off into the water. I started lifting out the seeds with a hand strainer(big holed) to see if they were clean and returning them to the pot after. Each time I scooped the seeds out bits of squash remained in the strainer. I filled a large bowl with water to rinse the particles off the strainer each time I scooped. It sounds tedious but it didn’t take more than ten minutes and I had the seeds of three squashes which is a lot. When the seeds seemed reasonably clean I removed them onto parchment paper. When cool I massaged the remainder of the squash off the seeds by massaging with paper towels. I wouldn’t say they was 100 clean, there were still a few bits here and there but I think this process was a lot less work than pulling the squash bits off each individual seed. Thought you might want to give this a try or even adapt the method. My seeds are toasting in the oven and can’t wait to try them.
Ive been roastin seeds for years and i never thought to boil them first. This added step is the real secret! It makes them crisp perfectly without the worry of burning during an extra 25 minutes in the oven it would take without boiling
I also love roasting butternut squash seeds. I’ve never boiled them first though.
Thank you so much for this great recipe! !!! Worked a treat! !!!!
I used organic Hokaido Pumpkin seeds grown here in Sintra, Portugal. The 1st time I cleaned them (painstakingly). The 2nd time I just boiled them with all the bits which then washed off easily.
Now I’m about to eat my pumpking and lentil curry.
Nice!