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Produce => Edible Plants => Topic started by: JanG on November 24, 2020, 09:37:58
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I like to have pumpkin seeds in muesli etc so thought I'd try kakai pumpkins for seed.
The result is that from the one plant I had there were three pumpkins and the total seeds they've yielded amount to 5oz or 140g. Not a huge haul and I'm not sure that I'd go out of my way to repeat the experiment except that I might as well use the remaining seeds in the packet. They were very little trouble and might last about a month for breakfast.
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Not sure how palatable Kakai are as fruit, apart from nice breakfast treats on your cereal. There is also this variety, Triple Treat, which is a Halloween squash, has edible seeds and the flesh is decent too. Just a thought (definitely no advertising intended others carry the same variety). https://www.simplyseed.co.uk/pumpkin-seeds/triple-treat.html
:wave:
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I love pumpkin seeds, but if you are using them in muesli it's worth knowing that the normal seeds have a much better flavour than the hull-less ones and the pumpkin flesh is actually worth eating too (I've tried Godiva, Kakai, Triple Treat and one or two others I can't remember because there's no point - they all taste the same - the seeds have half the flavour of hulled ones and so do the ones you buy in the shops because the producers can't be bothered shelling them either).
So if you are eating them alone or in something like muesli where you can taste them it's much better to grow a normal pumpkin - over the years I've been unimpressed by the sweet but flavourless types like delicata (which also have seeds not much bigger than a melon - but without the flavour). All the ones I bother to grow now are C.maxima (though C.argyrosperma sound promising aka. cushaw or pepita).
Hull-less seeds are worth buying (not growing) for bulk use - eg. put through the coffee grinder and added to bread mix for extra flavour (though I add a little paprika to avoid green bread) - the bonus is that it makes it unnecessary to add oil - the same goes for walnuts - what's the point of paying through the nose for 'flavour oils' when the whole-nut flour does the same job with 10x the flavour?
Talking of oils, toasted pumpkinseed oil is utterly delicious on salads - but it disappeared from supermarkets in the last recession - back then it was only twice the price of good virgin olive oil, but though the 'posh' olive oils costing ten times as much are back on the shelves (talk about diminishing returns) the toasted pumpkinseed oil is only available by mail order - am I the only person who's noticed that the internet is the worst possible place to buy speciality foods? It's crazy!
Pumpkinseed flour also makes a delicious and (moderately) convincing guacamole when mixed with olive oil, water plus a touch of mustard & vinegar and a tiny bit of sugar - or add cream if you like...
Cheers.
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Do you lightly roast/toast these seeds before eating?
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Interesting. When I've tried gently roasting/toasting seeds from maxima squash before, the hulls have been tough. or do you mean, Vinlander, that you de-hull them before eating on your muesli etc.?
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I de-hull a few unroasted into a spoon-or-two's-worth of my muesli (very chewy - just rolled oats & raisins mainly) and while I'm chewing the last mouthful I hull enough for the next one.
I quickly gave up roasting hulled seeds with the hull on because the roasting can leave them harder and/or more brittle - both of these can work against rapid shelling, and I also got more broken kernels - I only tried it once but it was obvious that the roasted batch took longer to shell overall despite some seeds being quicker.
About 20 years ago I had a few goes at roasting both hull-less and my own de-hulled seeds, and the conclusion I came to was that to my taste the hull-less ones benefited much more from the exercise - in fact it was difficult to resist eating the de-hulled ones before they got to the pan.
My main 'bulk uses' all worked fine with unroasted seeds anyway, and I found it quite difficult to pan-roast them (to a consistent result), plus I couldn't be bothered trying the oven, because at the time I could get the toasted oil at a reasonable price.
If I had more spare time I might have another go at it, even extract some oil, but unfortunately Covid19 has made it much more difficult and time consuming to get to my plot, so the expected extra time at home never materialised.
Not to mention the fact that the non-gardening member of "the bubble" now really does have more time to shout at the worker about doing DIY at home.
There's always been the classic management bllx imbalance where one half has plenty of time to find fault, and being buttonholed means even less time for the other half to get away & actually get things done.
But it's got worse with Covid - it was always a (mixed) metaphorical canoe with one oarsman (me) spending half the time rowing and the rest in meetings with 2 coxes, but now it's gone to a canoe with me and 6 coxes.
Cheers.
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I grew quite a few Hull-less styrian type pumpkins from supermarket seeds. Only one had seeds. They were very tasty. Unfortunately the local rats thought so as well, so I lost quite a few. I did not notice the holes appearing in them quick enough. I will try again next year. Hopefully fewer rats then.