Drying Pumpkin Seeds & Making Flavored Pumpkin Seeds

Pumpkins are in abundance in the fall and drying pumpkin seeds can be a great way to make the most of these yummy treats! Here are some pumpkin seed recipes for various flavors as well.

Drying Pumpkin Seeds

I love Pumpkin seeds. They are so good and are so good for you, plus they are like a free bonus when you are preserving pumpkin! Here is how to make some super yummy seeds.

First I’ll share how you can make a basic pumpkin seed recipe and then I’ll also have more flavors down below if you want to dress it up a little bit!

Basic Dried Pumpkin Seeds

What you need:

• Pumpkin Seeds
• Cookie Sheet
• Garlic Salt
• Olive Oil

Clean all the seeds out of a pumpkin. You can use the seeds from Sugar Baby pumpkins or the big ones like you carve for Halloween, it doesn’t matter.

Wash the seeds and clean out the chunks of pumpkin. Don’t worry about it being completely perfect.

Spread out on a cookie sheet. It does not have to be greased since you will be moving the seeds around.

Put your pumpkin seeds in a bowl and sprinkle with a little olive oil and Sprinkle garlic salt onto the pumpkin seeds for your desired saltiness.

Bake the pumpkin seeds at 250F for about an hour or more until fully dried out. Scoop around the seeds with a spatula about every 10 minutes. Keep moving the seeds around and baking until the seeds start to turn brown and they snap in half when you try and break them.

Yum. These smell so good while they are cooking!

Grab the printable recipe below to add to your Recipe Binder.

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Basic Dried Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients

• Pumpkin Seeds
• Garlic Salt
• Olive Oil

Instructions

1. Clean all the seeds out of a pumpkin. You can use the seeds from Sugar Baby pumpkins or the big ones like you carve for Halloween, it doesn't matter.
2. Wash the seeds and clean out the chunks of pumpkin. Don't worry about it being completely perfect.
3. Spread out on a cookie sheet. It does not have to be greased since you will be moving the seeds around.
4. Put your pumpkin seeds in a bowl and sprinkle with a little olive oil and Sprinkle garlic salt onto the pumpkin seeds for your desired saltiness.
5. Bake the pumpkin seeds at 250F for about an hour or more until fully dried out. Scoop around the seeds with a spatula about every 10 minutes.  Keep moving the seeds around and baking until the seeds start to turn brown and they snap in half when you try and break them.

Below you will find some other pumpkin seed recipes that I found for pumpkin seeds in different flavors if you are feeling adventurous. Be sure and comment with which ones you’ve made!

Roasted Dill Pumpkin Seeds

These Dill Pickle Pumpkin seeds are made with pickle juice and sound so yummy!

Spiced Maple Pumpkin Seeds

With the addition of cinnamon and maple syrup, these Spiced Maple Pumpkin Seeds sound like the perfect fall snack!

Chili Lime Pumpkin Seeds

These Chili Lime Pumpkin Seeds look so easy to make with only 3 ingredients!

Sweet and Salty Maple Pumpkin Seeds

Instead of focusing only on the sweet flavors like the recipe above, these Sweet and Salty Maple Pumpkin Seeds have the best of both worlds.

Now that you’ve got plenty of recipes for pumpkin seeds, check out these recipes for how to use all that delicious fresh pumpkin:

• Eggless Pumpkin Pie Recipe
• Pumpkin Turtle Cheesecake
• Easy Pumpkin Bread Recipe
• Easy Pumpkin Cookies
• Pumpkin Cake Muffins Recipe

And if you are looking to preserve the pumpkin for later, you can use my tutorial on Preserving Pumpkin.

What are your favorite pumpkin seed recipes?

This blog post about Drying Pumpkin Seeds was originally posted on Little House Living in November 2010. It has been updated as of September 2021.