Pumpkin Seed Recipe

One of my favorite traditional fall recipes has to be pumpkin seeds. They may not be the single most popular seed to eat, but they are really quite delicious when baked!

Pumpkin seeds don’t require a lot of preparation and can be baked fairly quickly. You can eat them alone or add them to a mix of things. Make up some trail mix with other nuts and seeds, some raisins, or your favorite trail mix recipe. You can add them to yogurt, put them on your salad, pasta, or anything!

Things You’ll Need:

About two cups of pumpkin seeds. You can get these from purchasing a small pumpkin and gutting it. There’s no sense in wasting the seeds from a good jack-o-lantern! But I will say that I prefer the seeds from orange pumpkins. I baked some seeds from a white pumpkin and didn’t care for them at all.

Before you get started, make sure you choose your seasoning. This can be a combination of things, but I have three favorites:

1. Sweet and hot - Honey, chili powder, and garlic pepper.
2. Classic – Olive oil, pepper, and salt
3. Cinnamon sugar – Well…cinnamon and sugar. And butter!

What You Do

Most of the seasonings are best done to taste, but I recommend the following general, loose measurements:

1. Sweet and hot – Two tbs. honey, 1 tsp chili powder, and about a half of a tsp of pepper.
2. Classic – Two to three tbs of olive oil, a half tsp of pepper, and a half tsp of salt.
3. Cinnamon Sugar – One tsp melted butter, one tsp sugar, one tsp cinnamon.

Wash seeds thoroughly and remove pumpkin guts. Let seeds dry while gathering and mixing seasonings. Mix ingredients together well and rub seeds in the mixture. You can just pour the seeds into the bowl that you mixed the seasonings in and stir them up a bit.

Preheat your oven to 325 or 350 and bake seeds on a pan for 40 minutes. You’ll want to brush the pan with melted butter or spray it with Pam, because otherwise those seeds will stick to the pan and be gross!

If your seeds start to brown, that’s okay! Just remove a couple from the over and chow down as a taste test – they should be slightly crunchy, not chewy or chalky or really toasted.

I hope you enjoy this yummy fall recipe!