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Shelling Pumpkin and Squash Seeds

 
pollinator
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I have more than three pounds of pumpkin and squash seeds left over from September to November of last year. I want to roast them, but I also need find a quick way to remove large ammounts of the seed coats without specialized machinery. It doesn't help that they're not Styrian "gymnosperm" pumpkin seeds, so they all have thick seed coats.
32592912-F9AC-4528-A58B-6D9CE9E40FB9.jpeg
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A load of squash seeds
 
Rocket Scientist
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Hi Ryan,   No personal experience here but found this technique that you might want to try:

How to shell pumpkin seeds

Let us know how it turns out if you do.
 
steward
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Well, the first question is "Why do you need to shell them"?  We eat ours roasted and in the shell.  Depending on the squash variety they can be tougher or not.
 
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You could puff them off. Like puffed rice or puffed wheat. If you had a puffer and I'm guessing you don't.
 
Ryan M Miller
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I'll try the method in the Wikihow page on a test batch and see how it goes. Last time I saw that page, the order of the directions wasn't very clear. Thankfully, whoever was the author of that wikihow page finally edited the instructions to read more clearly.
 
Ryan M Miller
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Now that I think about it more, the method shown in the Wikihow page reminds me of a method I saw to remove harmfull cucurbitacins from wild squash seeds, particularly buffalo gourd (Cucurbita foetidissima), and ozark wild squash (Cucurbita pepo ssp ozarkana). The main difference is that lye or cal is added to the water as is done when making hominy from corn. Here's the paper I saw explaining the process.
https://www.academia.edu/201964/Can_Cucurbita_pepo_gourd_seeds_be_made_edible
 
They gave me pumpkin ice cream. It was not pumpkin pie ice cream. Wiping my tongue on this tiny ad:
A rocket mass heater heats your home with one tenth the wood of a conventional wood stove
http://woodheat.net
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