Instructions

1. Soak the seeds overnight in more water than looks necessary. They swell considerably, and any seed sitting above the waterline stays hard.
2. Rinse them until the water runs clear rather than cloudy. Soaking releases a starch that dries into a chalky film and dulls both the colour and the seasoning.
3. Drain them in a sieve and then roll them in a towel. A wet seed is coated in water, not in oil, and the spices go wherever the oil goes.
4. Work the olive oil, paprika, turmeric, sugar and ginger into a paste before the seeds arrive. Turmeric in particular clumps into orange specks if it is shaken over already-oiled seeds.
5. Stir until every seed carries colour. There is a lot of turmeric here, and a pale seed among orange ones is a seed with no flavour on it at all.
6. Spread them one seed deep across mesh. Pumpkin seeds are flat and overlap by default, and anything hidden underneath will still be soft at the end.
7. Dehydrate at 43 °C for 15 hours, stirring them around with a spatula partway so the undersides come up.
8. Take a few off and wait until they are cold before testing. A finished seed cracks cleanly between the teeth with no leathery bend in the middle.
9. They keep two months in a jar at room temperature, or a year in the freezer. Pumpkin seed oil is delicate, and the first sign of it turning is a smell like old crayons.