Roasted Pumpkin Seed Pesto Recipe (with Pumpkin Seed Oil)

Published Categorized as Sourdough Bread Recipes

What often happens to me is that when I have sourdough bread I don’t have anything to put on a slice of it. And when the fridge is full of pestos, cheese, fresh vegetables, etc., I don’t have my sourdough bread (I could call this bad planning). I didn’t want to make an exception this time either (read: no bread in the view), so I decided to make something that I could still eat with my spoon with no guilt. This is how my roasted pumpkin seeds pesto with pumpkin seed oil was born. Best part, this is a vegan pumpkin seed pesto!

Roasted pumpkin seed pesto recipe (with pumpkin seed oil)

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Roasted pumpkin seed pesto with pumpkin seed oil

Roasted Pumpkin Seed Pesto With Pumpkin Seed Oil

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You can use to pesto for pasta, soups, it’s perfect on polenta, spread it over the slice of sourdough bread or mix it into salads.

  • Total Time: 8 minutes
  • Yield: 250 ml 1x

Ingredients

Scale
  • 150 g pumpkin seeds
  • 8090 g pumpkin seed oil
  • 4 small pinches of finely ground sea salt or to taste
  • Optional: minced garlic

Instructions

  1. Roast the pumpkin seeds for 6-8 minutes at 180°C/350°F.

  2. Let them cool.

  3. Transfer the seeds to a blender or to a food processor and first ground them semi-finely, take away 3-4 tablespoons of it to a jar, and then ground the rest again finely.

  4. Transfer the ground seeds into a jar, salt to taste and pour in pumpkin seed oil to get nicely spreadable consistency.

  5. Enjoy freshly made or keep in the fridge.

Notes

  • To make larger quantities, scale accordingly
  • Author: Natasha Krajnc
  • Cook Time: 8 mins

About Pumpkin Seeds (Kernels) And Pumpkin Seed Oil

Whenever I think of pumpkin seeds I think of my mother’s words of how they were her childhood sweets. She lived in the countryside where “real” sweets were something quite unreachable. 30 years later, she passed her healthy snack habit onto me and my brother and we would often take seeds of pumpkins we had with us to a school trip which kept us full for a long time.

Pumpkin seeds are a real nutrient-dense food as they provide a number of benefits to our body.

They:

  • contain a variety of antioxidants
  • are a rich source of vitamins (especially E) and minerals such as phosphorus, magnesium, manganese, copper, iron and zinc. Zinc is important for sleep, mood, skin and prostate health and magnesium is beneficial for the blood pressure.
  • are excellent source of plant-based omega 3s fats
  • are rich in amino-acids and fibers. One of the important amino-acids is tryptophan which is converted into serotonin and afterwards into melatonin, a sleep hormone.
  • are rich in natural phytoestrogens being beneficial for women in menopause

In Slovenia, pumpkin seed oil is considered as a true delicacy and it is made from an autochthonous pumpkin variety called Slovenska golica (Cucurbita pepo L.). Yellow colored pumpkins with green stripes is primarly cultivated for its seeds which are shelled and need no shelling prior to making oil.

Roasted pumpkin seed pesto recipe (with pumpkin seed oil)
Left: raw pumpkin seeds. Right: roasted pumpkin seeds.

Roasted Pumpkin Seed Pesto With Pumpkin Seed Oil

Ingredients

  • 150 g pumpkin seeds
  • 80-90 g pumpkin seed oil
  • 4 small pinches of finely ground sea salt or to taste
  • Optional: minced garlic

Note: to make larger quantities, scale accordingly

Instructions

  • Roast the pumpkin seeds for 6-8 minutes at 180°C/350°F.
  • Let them cool.
  • Transfer the seeds to a blender or to a food processor and first ground them semi-finely (left photo below), take away 3-4 tablespoons of it to a jar, and then ground the rest again finely (right photo below).
Roasted pumpkin seed pesto recipe (with pumpkin seed oil)
  • Transfer the ground seeds into a jar, salt to taste and pour in pumpkin seed oil to get nicely spreadable consistency.
  • Enjoy freshly made or keep in the fridge.

You can use this pumpkin seed pesto for pasta, soups. It’s also perfect on polenta. Spread it over the slice of sourdough bread or mix it into salads.

Better yet, you can make pumpkin pesto sourdough bread, just like I did!

You can also check out other wonderful sourdough pairings on my blog post.

Roasted pumpkin seed pesto recipe (with pumpkin seed oil)

Additional Health Tips for Pumpkin Seed Pesto

To preserve the healthy unsaturated fats it’s best to eat pumpkin seeds raw. If you would like to make pesto even healthier, skip the roasting step and proceed as written above or roast them at low temperatures, at 70°C/160°F for 15-20 minutes. In this way, you will still be able to enjoy the nutty flavor and aromas of roasted seeds. This also applies to toasted pumpkin seeds.

As other nuts, pumpkin seeds also contain anti-nutritious phytic acid which can inhibit the availability of above mentioned minerals. If eaten in larger quantities, it is therefore advisable to soak or to sprout the seeds and deyhadrated them afterwards to make them more pleasant to taste.

If you want to make sourdough with pumpkin puree, check out my pumpkin sourdough rolls.

Let me know if you made this pumpkin seed pesto recipe! Did you use olive oil instead of the one I used? Did you also add garlic cloves to your homemade pesto?

Speaking of garlic, don’t miss my wild garlic sourdough bread recipe!

Pumpkin Seed Pesto FAQs

Can you substitute pumpkin seeds for pine nuts in pesto?

Yes, you can substitute pumpkin seeds for pine nuts in pesto. Pine nuts are a traditional ingredient in pesto, but they can be expensive and sometimes hard to find. Pumpkin seeds, on the other hand, are more readily available and affordable.

How do you make pesto with pumpkin seeds instead of pine nuts?

To make pesto with pumpkin seeds, simply replace the pine nuts with an equal amount of pumpkin seeds in your favorite pesto recipe. You may need to adjust the amount of salt and garlic to suit your taste since the flavor of pumpkin seeds is different from pine nuts.

Are pumpkin seeds pine nuts?

No, pumpkin seeds are not pine nuts. They come from different types of plants and have distinct flavor profiles and nutritional profiles. While both pumpkin seeds and pine nuts are nutritious and versatile ingredients, they have different flavor profiles and are not interchangeable in recipes that specifically call for one or the other.

By Natasha Krajnc

Hi! My name is Natasha and I'm specialized in home sourdough bread baking and currently based in Slovakia - a very small country in Central Europe. My bread baking story began in 2011 when I decided to give up commercial yeast. I felt tired all the time (especially after eating bread and other foods made with yeast), I wasn’t motivated to do anything, had trouble concentrating throughout the day, my abdomen was bloated and I was like a trumpet on steroids – basically, I was quite a wreck. I was a big bread lover (and still am) and having to stop eating bread was quite hard at that time but I felt I was on a right way to give my body a chance to heal itself.

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