These Spicy Sriracha pumpkin seeds are a great snack with a kick and they are easy to make.
Ingredients
1 Tablespoon Butter
One Pound Raw Pumpkin Seeds
⅓ Cup Sriracha Sauce
2 Tablespoons Soy Sauce
1 to 2 Tablespoons Habanero Hot Sauce
1 Teaspoon Garlic Powder (Optional)
Directions
Heat the oven to 350 degrees. Mix the three sauces and garlic powder (see comment below) together in a bowl. Place the butter in a skillet on medium heat. When it is melted, add the pumpkin seeds and stir to make sure they are coated. Add the sauce mixture to the seeds in thirds. Pour on the first third and stir, then repeat with the remaining two thirds.
Stir the seeds on a regular basis so that they do not burn, especially towards the end of the cooking (they will take about 25 minutes). At first the seeds will be very wet and steaming from the sauce. As they continue to cook, they will puff up and turn to a reddish-brown color.
After about 25 minutes, they will still seem a little wet and have a bit of a sheen. Pour them onto a cookie sheet on top of the oven and spread them out, allowing them to sit with the oven on. This helps settle the seeds and dries them out. After thirty minutes, turn the oven off and the seeds are ready. They can be eaten at that point (they do taste good warm), but generally they are best the next day when the seasonings have really settled in.
Whether or not you add the garlic powder depends on how much garlic taste you like and the type of Sriracha sauce you use. Huy Fong’s is pretty strong on the garlic, so it may not need it. But some of the other Sriracha sauces I have sampled lately have less in the way of garlic flavor.
The habanero hot sauce adds some extra heat (I recommend Melinda’s or Sontava) since Sriracha sauce is usually on the milder end. If you prefer a milder snack, you can leave that out. With the habanero sauce, the seeds should come close to the Medium heat level on my scale. I will often substitute a ghost chili sauce or a few drops of one of the extract sauces like Dave’s Insanity Sauce to really kick things up.
This is a recipe that I came up with to use up extract sauce that I have in the pantry. Remember, there is no such thing as too much hot sauce. There is only hot sauce that is still waiting to be used! You can substitute a blend of other sauces with a Louisiana style like Frank’s Red Hot or a Mexican style like Tapatio or Cholula as the base for an alternate version of this snack.