Toasting Winter Squash & Pumpkin Seeds

I’m a Pumpkin seed junkie.  I love pumpkin seeds as a snack, sprinkled into porridge, made into crackers.  I add them to vegetable side dishes and stir frys.  And my favorite, mixed with chia seed to top an avocado sprinkled with my homemade fermented Mexican spice mix!  And luckily I fixated on such a healthy snack!  Pumpkin seeds, as well as other winter squash seeds, contain magnesium, iron, potassium and fiber.  And at 285 calories per cup, that’s a lot of nutrition bang for the calorie buck!

I grow a lot of winter squash and save every seed I can harvest, both for planting next year and for snacking.  Winter squash is delicious as a side dish or main meal so the seeds are an extra treat.  Even though I serve the squash quite often, and my chickens get half a squash every couple of days as part of their regular healthy diet, I never seem to make it thru the winter and spring with enough snacking seeds.  So I’ll hit the local health food co-op for for a pound or two of raw pumpkin seeds as I need them.  And I always plan to plant more squashes to get me thru next year.  Unfortunately, the deer in the woods have outsmarted me in finding those stray squash before I get them protected.  (Add to the to-do list:  Protect the squash!!)

There’s an entire list of winter squashes that are fairly easy to grow and the seeds are delicious.  Just check out any organic seed catalog and pick out a few varieties to grow!  My favorites are Hubbard, acorn, butternut, spaghetti and of course, pumpkins of all sizes.

Pumpkin seeds do have the shell, so those are for snacking out of hand, shelling them with our fingernails and teeth.  Bad habit, I know.  But the other squashes have soft shelled seeds and go so well in dishes, as mentioned above.  And the pumpkin seeds I buy in the co-op are shelled.  Oh, did you know you can also toast watermelon seeds as a snack?  Its a tedious process to gather them in all the pulpy goodness of the melon, but if you manage to, they are delicious toasted with salt and a little garlic.

My preferred method of toasting is a cast iron skillet on very low heat.  I heat up the pan, add a teaspoon of oil and then add a pound or so of raw seeds.  Turn the heat down to very low and stir stir stir!  I love to use walnut oil or coconut oil, depending on my tastes du jour.  And in about 25 minutes, I have a hot salty tasty snack.  Try them with some garlic or chili too.  Some folks prefer to do this in the oven.  Sometimes I’ll pop a skillet full in the oven after I’ve baked a cake or a roast.  But I still like the hands-on method on the stove.  Just because.

Since these toasted seeds have no preservatives and they are cooked with a small amount of oil, they have a limited shelf life.  I typically only toast what I will eat in a couple weeks.  You can store the toasted seeds in the fridge or freezer for longer shelf life.

So think about adding pumpkin and squash seeds to your regular diet.  Delicious and healthy!