Tag: halloween

This recipe has been a family tradition of mine probably nearly forty years. Original credit goes back to a printing in the Albany Democrat Herald long since lost in the annals of time. It makes a great snack for parties or after the pumpkins are carved.

• 4 cups – pumpkin seeds
• 1/4 cup – soy sauce
• 1/4 cup – butter
• 2 tablespoons – Worcestershire sauce
• 2 teaspoons – lemon pepper
• 1/2 teaspoon – garlic powder
• 1/4 teaspoon – celery salt
• salt
• Optional – dash of cayenne or chili powder

Clean your pumpkin seeds that you removed from your pumpkin. They don’t have to be perfect, in fact a little pumpkin give some sweetness to the seeds that are delicious.

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Begin heating the oven at 450 degrees F. Melt the butter with Worcestershire and soy sauce, then whisk into the melted butter. Add the remainder of the dry ingredients.

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Put the seeds in a bowl and mix them to coat. Once thoroughly coated, pour out onto a sheet pan to put in the heated oven.

Bake ten minutes and then stir up the seeds to expose mostly un-caramelized seeds. Bake for another five minutes. Take the pan out of the oven and sprinkle salt on the seeds. Wait another 10 minutes for the pan to cool and enjoy.

Now that the important stuff is done, I can tell a story. Don’t you hate those recipes that you have scroll through a bunch of stuff to get to what you want? According to my very limited research on SEO, you want to get right to the content. So there you go, I think I just invented a better way to present blog recipes.

My mom was always a recipe clipper. This one as I have said, came up in the newspaper and was clipped out for the ‘try’ pile of recipes. I seem to recall that it had a few more spices in it that I used, but I think this is the flavor profile I have been using for the last ten years or so.

When my mom made these, my brother and my flavor profile was completely blown. To us, this was exotic. So many spices that were not routinely used in our house. It actually started us trying spices on everything, particularly lemon pepper. We found that we really liked lemon pepper on popcorn. I haven’t done it in a while since it is usually microwaved these days, but it is really good.

Over the years, I have halfheartedly tried to look for the recipe but never finding it. The original was likely thrown out which lead me to making my own out of memory. Here are a few other tips.

• Seeds store well in the refrigerator. If you can’t get to them right after carving your pumpkin, you can store them for later. They can also be stored in the freezer for longer term if necessary.
• I seem to remember the original recipe having cumin in it. I think curry powder, ginger or five spice powder would also work well for a deeper exotic modification
• They are best eaten shortly after preparation. They tend to get soggy overnight like popcorn does.
• Not all ‘pumpkins’ are created equal. It seems like most of them these days are specifically for carving and not eating (I am not sure they are actually pumpkins). Seeds can vary from very thin and melon like to very tough. The seed is actually inside the white shell. If it looks tough, it probably is. I am not saying not to try it but the best seeds are from medium sized pumpkins.

I hope that I am not too late for you to try this year. I think that it would be great to hear other suggestions as well. So let me know what you did. Enjoy!