How many times have you scooped out the insides of a pumpkin only to throw it in the bin?
I know many of us have. But with shoppers wanting to make their food go further at the moment, it seems more wasteful than ever to be throwing anything away.
That's probably why pumpkin recipes are being widely shared - not least those involving the seeds.
Read more: Morrisons accused of 'robbing shoppers' with eye-watering price of giant pumpkins
Ideas of ways to flavour them have been doing the rounds on TikTok in particular so I decided to give one a go.
And with many people choosing air fryers as a more economical option, I picked a recipe where I could put our new Ninja Multi-Cooker to good use.
After carving our pumpkin ready for Halloween, the seeds were ready for the taking. OK they needed swishing around in a bowl of water to free them from the gunky stuff but they soon floated to the top for us to scoop out and strain.
The rest couldn't have been easier and you don't really need set amounts of the ingredients as you can just give them as much flavour as you want.
Here's what I did:
- Boil seeds for five minutes then pat dry
- Mix them in some melted butter
- Sprinkle with chilli powder, garlic powder or granules, paprika and salt
- Put them in the air fryer and cook on 210 degrees C for around 20 minutes, or until brown and crispy. If using a traditional oven, spread them on some baking paper on a tray and leave them in for around 35 minutes.
The result was a tasty snack in less than half an hour and three out of four of us liked them so that's quite a success.
The ingredients were what we already had in the cupboard and fridge so it didn't cost anything extra except for the cooking time, but with air fryers costing a fraction of typical ovens, we're talking pennies.
There are loads more ingredients you can flavour them with and I've seen some people adding brown sugar to sweeten them up a bit.
Now we've just got to find some recipes for the flesh itself and it'll be a waste-free Halloween all-round.
Do you have a pumpkin recipe to share? Will you be making something with yours this year? Let us know in the comments here.
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