By Jenna Shelton
With Halloween soon approaching and Lewis and Clark Community College’s Student Activities hosting a Pumpkin Decorating Contest, I just had to do some kind of Food Challenge that fit in with pumpkins, and what better than making pumpkin seeds! Ever since I was little, we would carve the pumpkins and spend hours going through the ‘guts’. Now that I am an adult, I know that the stringy insides of pumpkins are called the pulp, but I still like calling it their guts, digging out seeds so my mom could spend hours roasting them in the oven.
As we got older, it was not worth the effort of spending the whole night baking, and so one of our traditions slowly died. If we wanted pumpkin seeds we could easily just buy a bag at the grocery store or a gas station, but nothing can beat the taste of homemade. So when I saw a recipe for roasted pumpkin seeds that could be made in an air fryer, I got excited, thinking that this was an opportunity to start up some of my childhood traditions again with my daughter, but with a lot less work.
My friend, Marenike Moyegun, was kind enough to donate her seeds for this challenge, as she prepared her pumpkin for the Student Activities Pumpkin Decorating Contest, and we started with the savory method of this recipe. There was also a sweet version that I added to the recipe card, just in case anyone wanted to try that style, that had great reviews.
In the end, we only had to cook our seeds for just under 20 minutes, and even then some of the seeds were a bit too well done. I advise to watch the seeds very closely as they cook, because the instructions are incredibly accurate when it says that they go from good to burnt in seconds. Either way, they were absolutely delicious!!
Graphic by Alex Johnson
