Stove Top Pumpkin Seeds

Last weekend we had several friends over for a Pumpkin Carving Party.  So with at least 15 large pumpkins being carved, you can imagine we had a lot of seeds!  Luckily our friend Mary prefers sorting out the seeds from the guts to the actual carving so we ended up with a large bowl full of seeds.

I mean really large.  Here's the bowl with a can of pop for size reference.  It was over 5 pounds of pumpkin seeds!

With so many seeds to toast the idea of laying them all out on a cookie sheet to bake them seemed arduous.  So while I decided what to do I soaked the seeds in heavily salted water for a day in the fridge and then drained them and popped them back in the fridge for most of another day.

Instead of baking them I used a large pan on the stove.  I used just a tiny bit of olive oil, just enough for a super thin layer to coat the pan, maybe 1 tablespoon.  I put it over medium heat and once the oil was hot tossed in enough seeds to cover the bottom of the pan.

Every few minutes stir around the seeds to make sure they're getting cooked on both sides.  Cook for a total 8-12 minutes, depending on how much moisture your seeds retained.  Once cooked dump the seeds onto a plate with a paper towel to absorb excess oil and salt to taste.

They turned out really good; I don't normally like pumpkin seeds much but these were delicious and made the whole house smell nicely of pumpkin seeds.

Obviously we weren't going to eat 5 pounds of pumpkin seeds on our own, so I put them in cute bags to give our to our friends.