Blog: My Little Farm in Town

Eating in Season: Hulless Pumpkin Seeds

Saturday, November 20, 2010

A friend of mine was experimenting with new cultivars and grew pie pumpkins with hulless seeds called Snack Face ( http://www.jungseed.com/dp.asp?pID=03285 ) this year. I'll be trying a few hills of these little beauties in my front yard next season! The seed, indeed, was hulless and very strange looking. I am used to the usual pumpkin seeds with their leathery white hulls. These seeds were a funny black green when raw and a brown green color when boiled, baked, and ready to eat.

I started out by cleaning the pumpkin like any other hard winter squash:

1. Scrub the shell of the pumpkin with a few drops of dishwashing liquid and rinse well.

2. Cut the pumpkin in half with a big knife.

3. Scoop out seeds with a spoon and by combing your fingers through the stringy guts! Discard guts (or compost or feed to your chickens!).

Then I cleaned and cooked the seeds:

1. Place seeds in a colander and rinse, picking out any stray clumps of fibrous “guts.”

2. Dump seed into a sauce pan and cover with a couple inches of water and a tablespoon of salt.

3. Bring to a boil and then simmer for 15 minutes.

4. Dump water and seeds in the colander again—DO NOT rinse—and drain off all excess water.

5. Spread damp seeds evenly in one layer in a shallow baking pan.

6. Bake at 350°F for 30 minutes or until crisp and dry when cooled, stirring every 10 minutes to prevent burning.

The neat thing about this cultivar is that it is also a pie pumpkin. The walls of the pumpkin are thin when compared to other pie varieties, but the flesh is as sweet as a winter squash and a bit less fibrous than a pie pumpkin. Both the seeds and the flesh taste wonderful. (For cooking instructions, see my November 14 blog, Eating in Season: Winter Squash.) If you enjoy growing pumpkins and squash, this would be a good variety to try. Begonia

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