Pumpkin Seeds - Salty Surprise
Published on Mar 7th, 2008 in What I Ate with
I went to a Whole Foods/Trader Joe’s type of store yesterday and bought pumpkin seeds, something I normally don’t buy. The label on the container read, “Roasted and Salted.” Hmm…
I inspected the seeds through their plastic container, trying to determine if they had too much salt on them. No salt crystals noted; they looked pretty plain to me. In to the cart they went!
Once home, I immediately opened the container and popped one of the pumpkin seeds in my mouth. Egads! What in the world…?!! I discovered the seeds were horribly salty! These weren’t snacks; they were miniature salt licks for deer!
I was very disappointed, but didn’t want to dump all the seeds in the garbage. I decided I would try to remove the salt.
I soaked them in water, and like magic, once the seeds hit the water, they changed from a plain beige to a bright white. I realized each seed was covered in a thick film of salt! I could literally scrape the salt off with my thumb nail! Oh, this was going to be harder than I thought!
Here’s what the seeds looked like when they were soaking for quite some time. See the white salt film? You might notice some seeds that have been scraped with my nail too!
This is what the water looked like… after several soakings!
Is that not gross?
Poor pumpkin seeds! You used to be so healthy and tasty, but now you’ve been tarnished with an unpalatable covering of salt (that is invisible to the naked eye until wet… then it’s hard to miss)!
Well, now I’m trying to think of a moral to this story. Maybe it should be: Just because a store claims to have healthy food, doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true for all their food products!
Or maybe simply: Remain vigiliant when considering store-prepared pumpkin seeds! 
Update! The pumpkin seeds are almost dry now. I can easily peel away the salty shell to get to the meaty, unsalted part of the seed. The taste is good, so I’ll see if these seeds can be salvaged, poor little guys!
I love the image of mini salt licks! My mom would always lightly salt our pumpkin seeds. Lightly being the operative word.
Lightly is OK, and I bet they were tasty. These were anything but!
However, they’re not so bad if the outer shell is removed. I may just take a huge chunk of time (why not, it’s snowing a lot outside) and peel off the salty seed shells (say that quickly 5 times in a row).
I may toast them in the oven for a little bit too. Maybe that will help!
That sounds really good, to toast them in the oven.
The pics are great, especially the one of the water - eww! I buy no-salt added products - I’ve been eating like this for so long, I can really tell if salt has been added. I just don’t like it.
[...] here’s a post by Susan complete with pictures of the icky salt water residue that was left behind after she rinsed the [...]
JoLynn,
I’m not a big salt person either. In fact, I’d rather do without added salt. Now, sugar… that’s a whole other story, I’m afraid!