Carving pumpkins - just a waste of a good vegetable? Not necessarily!
Many Halloween pumpkins are not really grown with eating in mind, so their flavour leaves much to be desired! However there's nothing wrong with their seeds and with this recipe you don't even need to worry about shelling them!
First, get those seeds out of that pumpkin!
It's best to use small to medium pumpkins for this as the seeds will be smaller and better for this recipe. Then you'll need to separate seeds from strings.
The easiest way to do this is rinse them in cool water until the strings start to release the seeds on their own. They can them be composted!
Now you've got nice clean seeds, you can find out exactly how much you've got! Instead of weighing them, we're looking for the volume of pumpkin seeds. So pour them all into a jug or cup measure. The amount of pumpkin seeds you have will affect the ratio of water and salt you'll need. For every 50 ml of pumpkin seeds you will need 200 ml of water and 1 tsp (5ml) of salt, so if you have 200 ml of seeds, you'll need 800 ml of water and 4 tsp, 450 ml of seeds will need 1.8 ltr of water & 9 tsp (or 3 tbs), and so on.
Time to get boiling! But first, pre-heat your oven to 200C or Gas Mark 6. Ok, now you can bring the pumpkin seeds and salt up to the boil. Simmer for about 10 minutes and then drain the pumpkin seeds through a sieve of colander. Set them aside while you oil up a roasting pan or thick baking sheet!
Chuck in your pumpkin seeds and spread them out into one single layer. Toss them gently to cover them in the oil that's on the tin. Then bake on the top shelf of the over for 5-20 minutes depending on the size of your pumpkin seeds. Watch them carefully so they don't over roast and just become sad, blackened husks! You're looking for a nice golden brown.
Once your seeds are ready, remove from the oven and leave to cool. Don't tuck in straight away or you'll be in for a bad time! Once they're cool, shovel them in your gob as is or, if you really want to, you can crack open the shells for the kernels inside.
And there you have it! One quick and easy way to feel a little less wasteful this Halloween. If you're feeling adventurous you could even play with adding extra flavour twists at the roasting stage - lemon and thyme , sweet and salty , Moroccan spiced, the world really is your pumpkin seed!