Wednesday 20 January 2010

Butternut Squash seeds...

I may have mentioned here before that we have very little food waste in our household, except for veggie peelings and stuff. This is mostly because I eat it all up! Nom Nom! So I've been having a bit of a creative think about how I can reduce what food we DO get rid of and I started wondering about the seeds from Butternut Squashes (which mum can't get enough of at the moment!). I saw Jamie Oliver roast some pumpkin seeds on his Christmas TV programme, which led me to much googling and the joyous discovery that ALL pumpkin and squash seeds are edible, either raw or roasted! Which is really good news for me, because I'm vegan and like to eat lots of nuts and seeds because they have lots of nice oils and nutrients in them, but I'm aware that they're not from a very sustainable source (i.e. not grown in England), so this is a really good option for me, cos pumpkins and squashes are easy to grow in the UK!



I scooped all the seeds out and washed them (they're well sticky!), then left them to dry on some kitchen paper overnight (and yup, the kitchen paper went into the compost after!) then oven roasted them with some sunflower oil. They're very yummy too! In the name of seed-research I also tried some raw and they were very tasty - kind of sweet and a bit coconutty I thought.

There are timings and instructions here, but I've copied them out for you too...

PAN ROASTED SEEDS

In a 1-quart stainless steel saucepan over medium-high heat, roast 1 cup rinsed pumpkin seeds in1/2 teaspoon vegetable oil for about 8 minutes. Remove from the heat when they puff up slightly and start to change color. Add Salt to taste. Let cool to serve.

OVEN ROASTED SEEDS

In a 10- by 15-inch baking pan, place 2 to 3 cups rinsed pumpkin seeds.Sprinkle lightly with salt. Bake in a 300° F oven until golden and crisp, about 45 minutes; stir occasionally If made ahead, cool and store airtight up to 3 days. A 14-pound pumpkin yields about 1 1/2 cups of seed.

I wonder if you didn't want to eat them yourself, if the birds in your garden might like them too!

11 comments:

  1. Thanks for the recipe! I've been seeing tons of squashes at the store lately & have thought about trying them. Now if I do I know what to do with the seeds too!

    ReplyDelete
  2. Thank you very much Sooz! Seeds are not good for compost, so they always were a little problem.
    I'll use the recipes next autumn, when pumpkins will grow again! ;)

    ReplyDelete
  3. Hi Julia and Danda, thanks so much for visiting :)

    I never knew what to do with the seeds either so I'm glad there's a solution out there!

    ReplyDelete
  4. Hi Julia and Danda, thanks so much for visiting :)

    I never knew what to do with the seeds either so I'm glad there's a solution out there!

    ReplyDelete
  5. I've been roasting them too, with a sprinkling of cayenne pepper and salt.

    I haven't been able to grow the larger variety of squash or pumpkins up here in Scotland, the small ones - no problem.

    ReplyDelete
  6. That sounds delicious mangocheeks :) So nice to see you again :)

    ReplyDelete
  7. lol! I got dubbed at the dorm 'When you think of garbage, think of me!' lol!! :) /Dad at home used to gobble up everything too!)

    about the seeds - WOW! This sounds great!!

    Are you sure about 'all' the seeds (?) Did you mean just the edible or even of the unedible sorts?

    I was wondering about seeds of sweet Hokkaido pumpkins, they're very hard though, so not sure if this would work? Have you tried any?

    Danda, what do you mean with seeds not being okay for the compost? We compost them all the time! (And truth is we have some lovely pumpkins on compost heap or in garden without actually sowing seeds sometimes, that's the only 'by-product' though! :)

    ReplyDelete
  8. Hi Layla :D You've got me there with the seeds, I read on the net (but I can't remember where now) that ALL squash seeds were edible...I had no idea there were inedible sorts, by that do you mean poisonous, or bad tasting?, Perhaps I'd best so some more research!
    I've just done anther quick google of it, and come up with all these sites that say all squash seeds are edible
    http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=are+squash+seeds+edible&meta=&aq=f&oq=

    Which aren't unedible? I wouldn't like to recomend that people eat something bad for them!

    I haven't tried any pumpkin seeds yet, so I don't know how they turn out - maybe it's worth an expereiment though - let us know if you try!

    I also did a bit of research on composting pumkin seeds - everything that came up pretty much said you could compost the seeds, and that all the nice nutrients would go into your soil, but that they would probably sprout into plants in the spring (but to avoid this chop up the seeds first) - I'd still rather eat them though!

    ReplyDelete
  9. Well, I'm not sure about unedible ones either, just heard my relatives say some pumpkins etc might be edible and some not, not sure how true it is!
    We were wondering about some ornamental little pumpkins specifically, aunt said they were edible, Mom & I were still sceptical.

    There's a discussion here http://idigmygarden.com/forums/showthread.php?t=18768 that some might be bred for appearance and be bitter-tasting

    I would agree that some taste too bad to be worth eating, he he! You can't always know in advance, as they can 'marry' each other and some are good, some not so.

    I'm not an expert on this either, so willing to learn more too!

    We've roasted some conventional pumpkinseeds this year with a bit of salt and they were yummy! (and air dried some, others in a dryer at low temps - not so good, possibly more minerals though!)

    ReplyDelete
  10. Roasted Squash seeds ROCK and are the best bit in my opinion. So so good for you as well. Glad you have discovered their joys.
    :)

    ReplyDelete
  11. Jeni, I think they're the best bit too! Thanks for visiting :D

    ReplyDelete

Thanks for visiting!

You can also find me on Twitter @secondhandsusie and Facebook facebook.com/secondhandsusie