If you grew up celebrating Halloween like me as a kid, one of the fun treats that came with carving a jack o’lantern were the seeds inside. My mom would cook up a nice salty and savory treat with the seeds. I loved them so much. It made me look forward to Halloween just to have the toasty little goodness, even more so than carving the pumpkin.
While it isn’t the prime squash season of fall, my mother gave me a kabocha squash on my last visit with her and the seeds are strikingly similar to the pumpkin. Being they’re in the same family of vegetables, I figured, why can’t we toast all the seeds in squash? Indeed, this was true, upon my first Google search I found this recipe for Roasted Winter Squash Seeds.
I cleaned off my seeds and followed the recipe. One of the comments on the recipe gave the suggestion to soak the seeds in salted water for a more robust taste. So I soaked them for a few hours in water and Himalayan pink salt.
The time and temperature seemed a little low to me, but I went with it, knowing I could give it a go any other time.
Here are my tasty treats:
They came out kind of chewy, more chewy than I would have liked. I rather would have a crispy and cracking texture in the mouth. Good thing is this is only seeds from half the kabocha, so I can give it another try with the other half waiting for me in the refrigerator.
The lesson learned here is I will put them at a higher temperature for slightly longer for a less chewy texture. It may be hard to see in the photo, but these seeds are quite large and thicker than what I’ve seen in a pumpkin or other squashes.
I love this treat. Why? Because I get to eat the whole squash and enjoy them differently. It’s a nice wholesome snack to make whenever you have a squash in the kitchen. If this sounds good to you, I hope you try it and let me know how yours turned out. Even better - if you find the magic time and temperature let me know, thanks for reading!
