Squash seeds go in the oven, not the bin

When I cut a squash or pumpkin open, the first thing I see is a nest of orange strings and pale seeds, wet and smelling faintly of cucumber and melon. I scoop the lot into a bowl with a spoon, and for years that bowl went straight into the bin. Now it goes into the oven, and the jar of toasted seeds on our shelf never lasts long.

Any pumpkin or squash seeds can be toasted. Seeds from big carving pumpkins are large, with a thick white shell; butternut and other squash seeds are smaller and thinner and toast faster. The shells of the big ones are edible but chewy, so we eat those whole as a snack, and I keep the smaller ones for scattering over soup.

First, separating the seeds from the strings. I tip everything into a bowl of cold water and rub it between my fingers. The seeds float, the strings sink or stay in my hand, and in a few minutes I can scoop the seeds out. Then I put them in a colander and rinse them under the cold tap.

Drying is the step people skip, and it is the one that matters most. Wet seeds steam in the oven instead of toasting, and they come out chewy rather than crisp. I spread them on a clean tea towel, pat them dry, and if there is time I leave them for an hour or so while the pumpkin itself roasts. They should look dry and feel slightly sticky, not slippery.

Then a little oil, a teaspoon for the seeds from one pumpkin, a pinch of salt, and sometimes a little paprika or ground cumin. I toss them well so they are evenly coated and spread them on a baking tray in a single layer.

The oven is at a moderate heat, 170°C, or 150°C for a fan oven. Small seeds take about ten to fifteen minutes, large pumpkin seeds fifteen to twenty. I stir them once or twice so they colour evenly. You can hear when they are ready: they start to crackle quietly and some of them pop. They should be golden, not brown. Burnt seeds taste bitter, and they go from golden to dark quickly, so I don't walk away from the oven for the last few minutes.

If the oven is not on anyway, a dry frying pan over a medium heat works too, for five to eight minutes, shaking the pan often.

I let them cool completely on the tray before putting them away, because warm seeds in a closed jar make condensation and go soft. Once cold, they go into a clean, dry jar with a lid, and we eat them within a week or two, a handful with tea, over a bowl of soup, or tossed into a salad.

The seeds are also lovely in other places. I stir a handful into the dough for a plain loaf, sprinkle them over porridge, or mix them with a few raisins for the children's lunchboxes. Spiced with a little paprika, they are a good thing to put out in a bowl when friends come round, instead of a packet of crisps. If I have seeds from two or three pumpkins at once, I toast them separately by size, so the small ones don't burn while the large ones finish.

A word for the youngest: whole seeds, like whole nuts, can be a choking risk for small children, so for toddlers I grind them or leave them out.

One squash doesn't give you many, and every time I wish there were more. Nobody walks past that jar without taking a pinch.

Do you keep the seeds from your pumpkin, or do they still go in the bin?