Make The Absolute Best Roasted Pumpkin Seeds With One Umami-Packed Sauce

Roasted pumpkin seeds are an autumn tradition in many homes, as indicative of the season as apple cider, cranberries, and butternut squash. If saving and roasting pumpkin seeds hasn't yet made its way into your family's fall repertoire, perhaps it's time for some umami inspiration. Those seeds, cloaked in flat, oval, cream-colored shells, do tend to be a bit blasé when the only flavoring is a sprinkling of salt. But the transformative power of one single sauce sends these seeds into super-snack territory. We're referring to an increasingly standard Asian-style pantry item: Soy sauce. 

Rather than dry-spice flavorings that perk up the outer hulls only, soy sauce slips and slides its way into the inner green seed thanks to its liquid nature, creating an immersive tongue teaser that keeps you reaching for more and more. That's actually a good thing, as pumpkin seeds carry pretty impressive amounts of antioxidants, protein, vitamins, minerals, potential anti-cancer properties, and more. Making them tasty with soy sauce is just an added bonus. 

Plenty of other ingredients can jazz up pumpkin seeds, but the savory, umami-rich ones are the absolute best, uniquely deepening the flavor of the seeds. It just so happens that one of the umami-est of them all is soy sauce. Any type will suffice, but to precisely flavor pumpkin seeds per personal taste, choose the type of soy sauce with the characteristics you love. Options range from traditional Japanese and Chinese soy sauces to white, sweet, double-fermented, or even flavored and smoked versions.

The most basic way to infuse scooped-out pumpkin seeds with soy sauce is to place them in a bowl, dash the seeds all over with the sauce, and let them soak for a few minutes before roasting. But there's oh-so-much more potential than that. Consider spices that would complement pumpkin seeds and add them to a soy sauce mixture, preferably with a bit of oil to temper the stringency and help evenly distribute the soy flavor.

For example, try adding soy sauce to a chili-roasted pumpkin seed recipe, slightly reducing whatever oil you're using, and replacing it with a splash of soy sauce. Another excellent way to infuse pumpkin seeds with earthy, nutty, and umami flavors is to tumble them in a mixture of vegetable or olive oil, sesame oil, and soy sauce. For example, to season two cups of fresh pumpkin seeds, use four teaspoons of olive oil, two teaspoons of sesame oil, and one teaspoon of soy sauce. Toss the seeds in the oil, sprinkle with cracked black or lemon pepper, and roast until the hulls are warm and crunchy. 

You may have heard of furikake pumpkin seeds, which is actually just a twist on soy sauce pumpkin seeds, employing the same soy sauce but with added sugar, enhanced by a sprinkling of furikake, an easily sourced dried seaweed seasoning. You may be surprised to discover a familiar taste: It's similar to teriyaki flavor but with the added seaweed flavor.