Roasted Butternut Squash Seeds

I have always liked a good toasted pumpkin seed, so when I started realizing that my butternut squash plant was producing like crazy, I googled whether or not their seeds were good to eat. Seeds are so nutricious, and I now had so many of them!

The hardest part about this recipe is certainly the acquiring of clean seeds from the mountains of orange slime inside each squash. This website made me feel so much more sane as I was doing it, and includes a recipe for the seeds themselves: http://toriavey.com/how-to/2012/10/all-about-butternut-squash-how-to-peel-seed-slice-and-prepare/ I doubt I would have attempted this at all, if it weren’t for the advice to submerge the seeds in water, which was essential to getting the slimy orange goo off.

I used paprika, salt, and garlic once I had tossed the seeds with butter, and toasted them until there was a decent bit of char on them. I thought, as I often do, that I might have ruined them, but they were light, crisp – really much better than pumpkin seeds, which tend to retain an internal chewiness. These were like popcorn, in the sense of being completely crisp and airy.

I packaged them up in a tupperware container and accidentally left them in my car on the way to work, where I discovered that they are the perfect snack for when you are going home but you are already hungry after work. I would eat enough to be less ravenous  but stop in time to still want my dinner once I got home – a rare and wonderful combination. The allure of fast food always goes down when I have some kind of snack, and these fit the bill perfectly. Like popcorn, I also enjoyed them while watching movies with Husband. Overall, a great and easy treat if you are making butternut squash anyway!