Last week I went over to a friend's house and carved pumpkins with her and her young son. She, a pumpkin seed fanatic, was delighted to learn that I didn't want the seeds out of my own pumpkin. I cheerfully picked them out and tossed them in her bowl.
I love store-bought roasted pumpkin seeds (a.k.a. pepitas). So why, when I roast pumpkin seeds, are they always so terrible?
The answer is deceptively simple: because the seeds from carving pumpkins are terrible.
Carving pumpkins have been bred to be good for carving. But they aren't very good to eat, which is why you have to hunt down special pie pumpkins if you want to make homemade pumpkin pie from scratch. I knew this, but I didn't know that the same applies to pumpkin seeds. The seeds in carving pumpkins are covered with a thick white hull which makes eating them not unlike eating a handful of fingernail clippings.
If you want to do it right, seek out a Styrian pumpkin, which is a pumpkin variety that is specially designed to produce tasty seeds. Seeds from a Styrian pumpkin are small, smooth, green, and lacking in that horrible white hull.
Like many people, I used to save and try to roast my pumpkin seeds mainly out of guilt. Now that I know that they aren't particularly edible in the first place, I will compost those seeds with abandon in the future! (Or pawn them off on friends who want them.)
There is one good use for the seeds from carving pumpkins: chicken owners swear that they make an effective worming treatment. Assuming you can convince your chickens to eat the pumpkin guts. I tried it one year, and my chickens refused. I guess I will have to stick to giving them actual worming medication!
Image courtesy Flickr/cursedthing
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