Recipe for Roasted Pumpkin Seeds

Don't throw those pumpkin seeds away, roast them! They're a delicious and nutty treat. Here's how:

Pre-heat oven to 325 degrees F. Rinse pumpkin seeds under cold water; the sooner you do this, the better, as they're harder to clean when dry. Spray baking sheet with non-stick cooking spray (I use olive oil) and spread out pumpkin seeds in a single layer. Sprinkle with salt and bake until toasty, about 25 minutes. Let cool and store in an air-tight container.

About Pumpkin Seeds

A pepita (from Mexican Spanish: pepita de calabaza, "little seed of squash") or pumpkin seed is an edible seed of a pumpkin or other cultivar of squash (genus Cucurbita), typically rather flat and asymmetrically oval, and light green in color inside a white hull. The word can refer either to the hulled kernel or unhulled whole seed, and most commonly refers to the roasted end product. The pressed oil of the roasted seeds of a specific pumpkin variety is also used in Central and Eastern European cuisine (see Pumpkin seed oil).

Pepitas are a popular ingredient in Mexican cuisine and are also roasted and served as a snack. Marinated and roasted, they are an autumn seasonal favorite in the rural United States, as well as a commercially produced and distributed packaged snack, like sunflower seeds, available year-round. Pepitas are known by their Spanish name (usually shortened), and typically salted and sometimes spiced after roasting (and today also available as a packaged product), in Mexico and other Latin American countries, in the American Southwest, and in specialty and Mexican food stores. In the Americas, they have been eaten since at least the time of the Aztecs and probably much earlier, since squash was one of the three earliest plant domesticates in the Western Hemisphere, along with maize (corn) and common beans (collectively, the Native American agricultural "Three Sisters", originating in Mexico).

They are often simply called pumpkin seeds in English. As an ingredient in mole dishes, they are known in Spanish as pipian. Lightly roasted, salted, unhulled pumpkin seeds are popular in Greece with the descriptive Italian name, passatempo ("pastime").

Nutrition

The seeds are also good sources of protein, and the essential minerals iron (25 grams (about a US quarter-cup) can provide over 20 per cent of the recommended daily iron intake) as well as zinc, manganese, magnesium, phosphorus, copper, and potassium. The seeds also provide essential polyunsaturated fatty acids (including at least one ω-3 unsaturated fatty acid and at least one ω-6 unsaturated fatty acid).

Lightly roasted seeds provide better nutrition than dark ones, as excessive heat destroys some of their nutritive value.