Pumpkin, Sunflower, Chia and Flax: How to Actually Eat Your Seeds
Seeds are easy to buy and easy to forget about. Which ones need soaking, which need grinding, which taste better roasted, and how to keep them from going stale.
NutsAndCrafts
22 October 20263 min read
It's easy to buy a bag of seeds with good intentions and find it at the back of the cupboard six months later. The trick is knowing what each one is good for, because they really don't all behave the same way.
The quick version
Seed | Eat it how | Needs soaking? | Needs grinding? |
|---|---|---|---|
Pumpkin | Raw or roasted, as a snack or topping | No | No |
Sunflower | Raw or roasted, as a snack or topping | No | No |
Chia | Soaked into a gel, or sprinkled on wet food | Usually, yes | No |
Flax (alsi) | Ground, then added to food | No | Yes, for most of the benefit |
Pumpkin seeds
Green, flat and slightly chewy, pumpkin seeds are the easiest of the lot. Eat them straight from the pack, or toast them.
To roast: spread them in a dry pan over medium heat and stir for three to four minutes, until they start to pop and smell nutty. Add a pinch of salt or chilli at the end if you like. Let them cool before storing.
Use them on salads, soups, poha, upma or yoghurt, or eat a small handful as they are.
Sunflower seeds
Small, grey-green and mild, sunflower seeds work just like pumpkin seeds. Roast them the same way, though they take a minute less. They're good in trail mix, sprinkled on bread dough before baking, or stirred into [dry fruit laddoos](/blog/dried-figs-anjeer-guide).
Chia seeds
Chia is the odd one out. Put it in liquid and each seed grows a jelly-like coating, soaking up many times its own weight.
Basic chia pudding: stir 2 tablespoons of chia into ½ cup of milk. Wait five minutes, stir again to break up clumps, then leave it in the fridge for at least two hours, or overnight. Top with fruit or a few chopped nuts.
In drinks: stir a teaspoon into lemonade or nimbu paani and let it sit for ten minutes.
One caution: don't eat a spoonful of dry chia and then drink water. It swells as it soaks, and that can be uncomfortable or even a choking risk. Soak it first, or sprinkle it onto food that's already wet.
Flax seeds (alsi)
Flax has a tough outer shell. If you eat the seeds whole, a lot of them pass through without being broken down. That's why flax is usually ground.
To grind: use a dry grinder or spice mill, in short bursts, until you have a coarse powder.
To use: stir a spoonful into atta for rotis, into porridge, smoothies or curd, or sprinkle it over sabzi. Many families roast flax lightly, grind it with a little salt, and keep it as a mukhwas-style mix.
Grind small batches. Once ground, flax goes stale quickly. Keep ground flax in a closed jar in the fridge and use it within a couple of weeks.
Storing seeds
Seeds are full of natural oils, and those oils turn rancid with heat, light and time. Rancid seeds smell sharp or like old paint and taste bitter.
- Keep whole seeds in an airtight jar in a cool, dark cupboard.
- In summer, or if you buy in bulk, keep them in the fridge.
- Taste one before you cook with a batch you haven't used in a while.
We sell [pumpkin](/products/pumpkin-seeds), [sunflower](/products/sunflower-seeds), [chia](/products/chia-seeds) and [flax seeds](/products/flax-seeds), all in our new [Seeds category](/categories/seeds).