Pumpkin Seeds

I noted in my previous post on pumpkin soup that the Cinderella pumpkin was really a disappointment in terms of being a cooking pumpkin; however, I still thought it would be worth a shot at making roasted pumpkin seeds.  The taste of the seeds was sub-par due to the type of seed, but thought I would share the process of roasting pumpkin seeds anyways!

We started by separating the seeds from the pumpkin innards by submersing the seeds and guts in a mixing bowl of water and sorting by hand.  We then placed the seeds between paper towels to dry for 30 minutes.  This method gets the job done, but it's a bit of a pain to pick the seeds off the paper towels.

Once the seeds were dried and clean, we transferred them to a sil-pad on top of a sheet pan and roasted them in the oven at 350 degrees for 30 minutes.

After the seeds were done roasting, we tossed them with ground pepper, kosher salt, and smoked paprika.  Again, the flavor and roasting of the seeds came out great, but the actual taste and chew of the seed, being from a lackluster cooking pumpkin, was not great.  So when you're ready to roast pumpkin seeds, make sure you pick up a jack-o-latern pumpkin!