Non-dairy milk out of pumpkin seeds

In a thread about using squash as a diary substitute, Concept cooking: Using squash to replace dairy it was casually mentioned by a couple of people to make a non-dairy milk out of pumpkin seeds. Rather than derail that thread by asking questions, I'm asking them here!

If you do that, do you roast the seeds or use them raw?
Do you have to shell them or can the shells stay on or be crushed and filtered out?
Must the seeds be fresh or do dried work? What about frozen?

:D

Pearl! No need to shell! use the seeds fresh out of the pumpkin/squash/melon, blend the patootie out of them and strain them out.

if you have dried seeds in my experience you need to soak overnight or briefly soak in boiling water (only tried this with dried raw hulled pumpkin seeds and sunflower seeds, not sure how appropriate it is for other seeds).

As for your other question, i've tried this with frozen melon and squash seeds (sometimes i have the melon but no desire to make milk), defrost and works just fine.
It's not necessarily a thick milk, but i enjoy drinking it, it makes a nice iced matcha latte or thai tea, probably good in most cooking applications too. The key seems to be not using too much water (i'm a repeat offender.... a whole melon's seeds takes maybe 2 or 3 c water max! and keep in mind you'll lose about half a cup in the straining, unless you've got a press or something)

I'm going to repeat what you said in your other thread that i think is really interesting and bears repeating:
store-bought alt milks are EXPENSIVE
they are easy and often quite cheap to make from normal things
they often work just great for baking/cooking applications
whipping up alt milks is a nice skill that occasionally comes in handy!

Hmm....
I'm sitting on a batch of fresh pumpkin seeds that haven't dried yet.
I think I'll experiment! Half out of raw seeds, and I think I'll toss the other half through a food processor to break them up, roast the whole mess, and make it out of them. Seems to me that would be a deeper, richer flavor.
I'll have answers to that tomorrow morning :) I'll do this today.

I look forward to seeing how it goes! i am not sure if roasting will make them less "apt to milk" (?)- the flavor will probably be much more interesting and nutty for sure, but i suspect it will be less white (I've tried making milk out of various roasted/nonroasted and sprouted/soaked vs non soaked/sprouted and seen similar differences). maybe something happens with the content in the roasted seeds.
i'm thinking about previous experiments with horchata and wonder if adding a bit of oats might help make it creamier/whiter in the roasted version.

Ah, coloration.
The difference between you and I is I'm not trying to mimic cow's milk, I'm trying to make a tasty drink, and color is not an issue for me, I feed me and mom, not kids who are expecting cow's milk.

One of my things with food and other people is they tend to have expectations for it that I don't, so I can get weirder, as I don't expect it to end up a certain way.  

Lesson learned so far in the kitchen is do not use a coffee grinder on fresh pumpkin seeds. That's a mess and a freaking half. :D

If you're making an alternative to "milk" for drinking, as opposed to an alternative to bake with, I can see how you'd have to be much more careful with the "drink" version. A friend was just complaining that she finds oat milk "bitter", (and bloody expensive) but buys it because if she wants something like hot chocolate, it substitutes acceptably.

I'm mostly interested in this thread because composting my pumpkin seeds tends to attract rats (we're having a *really* bad rat year locally) as well as ending up with volunteers where I least expect them (not always a problem - a zucchini type volunteered by the goose shelter this year - I protected it with fencing and watered it with used goose bucket water and it was quite happy and productive until it got mildew). However, it just seems very wasteful to toss all that great nutrition.  This year I grew a lot of naked seed pumpkins and they did well, but you only get about 1 1/2 cups of seeds for 4 1/2 cups of pumpkin, so the seeds generate a *lot* of pumpkin mush that needs using. (Last night I made Pumpkin Oatmeal Dark Chocolate Chip Bars that my friend says are excellent - it made a large jelly-roll pan full and I only used 3/4 cup of brown sugar. )

Back on topic...
Tereza: 1.  About how much in cups or grams of pumpkin seeds did you use with the 2 cups of water?
2. Have you tried using a jelly bag to get the juice out, or just used a sieve?

I'd so love a decent way to squeeze things like this, but it's hard to justify another piece of equipment in my over-stuffed kitchen! So ideas about that would be welcome also. A friend of mine has a "juicer", but it's a bit of a bother to get it out for only a small quantity. I've got my M-in-L's old juicer, but it's a pita to clean. I really should haul it out and do some experiments with it though.

hm, maybe i'm not being too clear about the milk. i'm not a big milk drinker myself and my kid is an adult who has never drunk cow's milk, so we're not wedded to it! I think what I mean by color i'm meaning "more milk than tea", for example. roasted pumpkin seeds probably make great tea (like roasted corn). but it's not got the fat or texture to be used in a milk-type application (pudding, pie, etc). maybe not making too much sense, it's been a long day.

Jay, I use a butternut-squash size or small melon's worth (up to the size of my head, maybe smaller). no idea cup or gram equivalent. Not sure what a jelly bag is but if it's like a chinoise or something I do not have the patience or hand strength-- I have what Amazon calls a "handled mesh strainer" (big enough to fit over a bowl) for straining pulp out of juice, not sure I've ever seen one in north america but down here every person who makes juice out of fruit uses them to strain out pits, seeds, etc. You stir the pulp, then whack the sieve around a bit, whatever's left gets composted.

Jay Angler wrote:......

I'd so love a decent way to squeeze things like this, but it's hard to justify another piece of equipment in my over-stuffed kitchen! So ideas about that would be welcome also. A friend of mine has a "juicer", but it's a bit of a bother to get it out for only a small quantity. I've got my M-in-L's old juicer, but it's a pita to clean. I really should haul it out and do some experiments with it though.

For small batches, I go from blender vessel through a steel mesh colander (to filter the larger debris) and into a french coffee press.  The fine screen in that press does a decent job of filtering a lot of the fines out of the milk, but you may have to experiment to not have it clog too much.  I've used this approach with homemade cashew, almond, and oat milk.