Tuesday, October 26, 2010

Sweet and Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

So we carved three pumpkins and we had SO MANY SEEDS. Apparently people toast or roast them, but I'd never done that (I know, sacrilege). I perused the internets and chose Martha Stewart's recipe for sweet and spicy pumpkin seeds.

First, I soaked my pumpkin seeds in water to remove as much of the stringy pulp as possible, then strained them in a colander for 30 minutes.

I removed the seeds and patted them dry with a paper towel. Or at least that's what I was supposed to do. They totally stuck to my paper towel, were slick and were just generally not going the way I thought they would. But you know me; I just pressed forward.

Once they were...drier...I spread them on parchment paper on a baking sheet. The oven was preheated to 275 degrees when I popped them in. I let them roast for one hour, stirring them around twice.

Meanwhile, I mixed up the spices: three tablespoons of sugar and 1/4 teaspoons each of cumin, cinnamon and ginger.

Once the seeds were roasted, I started melting four tablespoons of butter, instead of peanut oil as Martha suggested. WARNING: Here is where I think I could have let them roast longer!!

I dumped the seeds, plus two more tablespoons of sugar in the butter and stirred until it began to slightly caramelize.

And I dumped that whole mixture into the spices and stirred it up.

Ta-da! Spicy and sweet roasted pumpkin seeds.

But this story does not have a happy ending. First of all, they weren't fully crunchy because I didn't know quite what I was looking to achieve. Second of all, cumin overpowers everything it comes into contact with, so I would skip the cumin or use less of it. I had high hopes of sharing my pumpkin seeds at work, but two bites and we all kind of wrinkled our noses. I have plenty of seeds left, so I'm going to try it again, minus the cumin and plus more roasting time.

1 comment:

Emily Scarborough said...

I made this same recipe but I loved the spices and thought it could use way, way, way less sugar. Mine seemed to be overpowered by the sugar!

Thanks for sharing the recipe!