Don't leave the kitchen....

[Oros]

I recently had a bad experience with roasting pumpkin & sunflower seeds.........quick, easy, simple.

Just spread out raw seed mix evenly on an oven pan and bake/grill at 240 deg C for about 10-12 minutes, but, for pete's sake...........don't desperately need to go pee when theres only a minute or two left till done!!!

Talk about instantanious combustion! Black smoke billowing out of the oven, smoke alarms going off, and the stink.............

[Pseudonym]

The fats from pumpkin and sunflower (and flax) seeds are excellent, but I think I read somewhere that when cooked, they become rancid and are then no better for you than any other kind of oil. Perhaps one of our nutrition gurus can confirm this?

(Of course, rancid fats or not, they still taste damned good toasted!)

[keats]

EFAs in Flaxseed, pumpkin and sunflower Oil are very sensitive to heat and should never be subjected to temperatures above 49°C. If your seeds reach temperatures above this point, you run the risk of compromising the quality of this EFA-rich oil instead add it to your salad dressings, drizzle it over cooked pasta, etc.

[THEBERG]

The fats from pumpkin and sunflower (and flax) seeds are excellent, but I think I read somewhere that when cooked, they become rancid and are then no better for you than any other kind of oil. Perhaps one of our nutrition gurus can confirm this?

(Of course, rancid fats or not, they still taste damned good toasted!)

i heard a similar thing on opra once but when i did a nutrition paper at uni i never heard this kind of thing, also similar to the idea that you cant get protein from eggs until their cooked, i will investigate a little on these two matters

[Varven]

Opra ???

errrr depending on the month shes always at different stages of bulking.. id trust her advice

[THEBERG]

Haha yeah you cant trust opra, i was just stating that saw an epsiode once where they mentioned fats becoming rancid, and no i am not a stay at home mom

Any ways i found some stuff::

Olive Oil Myth: Olive oil loses its benefits when heated

The Facts: Excessively heating olive oil will evaporate the alcohols and esters which make up its delicate taste and fragrance. Heating olive oil will not change its health aspects, only the flavor. Use a cheaper olive oil which doesn't have much flavor to begin with if you want to fry with it, add a more flavorful olive oil after cooking or at the table.

Olive Oil Myth: Heating a cooking oil will make it saturated or a trans-fatty oil.

The Facts: As far as making a saturated fat, according to Dr. A. Kiritsakis, a world renowned oil chemist in Athens, (Book - OLIVE OIL FROM THE TREE TO THE TABLE -Second edition 1998), all oils will oxidize and hydrogenate to a tiny degree if repeatedly heated to very high temperatures such as is done in commercial frying operations. Olive pomace oil and virgin olive oil are both highly monounsaturated oils and therefore resistant to oxidation and hydrogenation. Studies have shown oxidation and hydrogenation occurs to a lesser degree in olive oil than in other oils. But in any case, the amount of hydrogenation is miniscule and no home cook would ever experience this problem.

The large refinery-like factories which take unsaturated vegetable oil and turn it into margarine or vegetable lard do so by bubbling hydrogen gas through 250 to 400 degree hot vegetable oil in the presence of a metal catalyst, usually nickel or platinum. The process can take several hours. You cannot make a saturated product like margarine at home by heating olive oil or any other vegetable oil in a pan. We don't know where this weird notion has come from. For more see our olive oil chemistry page

Hope this helps, clears up how hard it is for fats to become rancid

[Pseudonym]

Good find... thanks, THEBERG!

[BigRed2007]

Very nice, btw where is a good place to buy cheap seeds from?