Sunflower Seed Preparation

I found a recipe on food.com on how to prepare sunflower seeds.  Their recipe was for one cup of seeds, so I just loosely followed the instructions.

Their instructions said to rinse the seeds and remove any plant or flower head matter.  Yeah, for one cup of seeds that might not be an impossible task.  For about ten cups, it was an impossible task.  I rinsed and swished and picked through the seeds for some time before giving up and deciding to cook all the "plant matter" together with the seeds.

So put all of the seeds in my 8.5 quart stockpot, filled it with water and tried to push the floating mass of seeds and plant matter down into the water.  That didn't work.  I put a cup of kosher salt into the mess and stirred it all around.  Then I allowed the water to come to a boil and turned it down to simmer for about an hour.

Then I drained the seeds and laid them out on this towel to dry.  The recipe said to use paper towel, but I'd have had to use a whole roll, so I opted for a towel.  I picked out as much leaves and plant matter as I could and a lot of the tiny pieces stuck to the towel when I took the seeds off.  It was taking way too long for them to dry, so I figured I'd go ahead and put them in the oven, which was the next step anyway, and I figured the oven would dry them out just fine.

So, I put them in this roasting pan and into the oven preheated to 325 degrees to cook for what I thought was going to be about an hour, stirring frequently.  Two hours later, the seeds were still steaming.  I was afraid they were going to overcook, so I turned them down to 135 in hopes that the warm oven would dry them out without cooking them.  Several hours later, it was time to go to bed and the seeds were still damp.  I turned them off for the night.

They're back in the oven now on low.  They have a very good smoky/salty flavor, but I don't know if I'll ever get them dried out.