Kitchen Garden Forum

The girl at the back of my plot grew a whole bed of sunflowers this year ,and i must say it looked luvly.Any how she wants to know an easy way to take the husk from the seed so she can eat them.I said i will ask you lot on here and get back to her ,as i havnt got a clue apart from doing it by hand.Any ideas anyone?

i leave ours for the birds, after a few rainstorms the husks are quite soft and come off easily. you could try soaking the seeds to soften the husks then dry them for storage?

The Grock in the Frock wrote:The girl at the back of my plot ...wants to know an easy way to take the husk from the seed so she can eat them.

Interestingly, I have a stack of Sunflower heads I've harvested, though I was going to keep them for the birds.

Unless you get any really cunning answers, your friend might consider doing the same. I'm saying this becuase last week I bought a bag of salted Sunflower seeds, thinking they'd be tasty and healthy.

Well, they're certainly full of fibre if you're impatient, because getting the seed coat off by hand was a nightmare (and these were big seeds, around 1.5cm long). Maybe the salting/roasting made them tougher, but I basically had to do it one-seed-at-a-time!.

Look forward to hearing alternative methods (I've still got half a bag left!).

Colin

I dry off my seed heads and then winkle them out with a fork and put them on the bird table for the birds where they seem to be greatly prized as apparently they're a great source of nutrients.
I did try nibbling a few of the dry seeds myself but it was hard work chewing through the black outer casings. Most of the sunflower seeds you buy in the health food shops for human consumption have already been husked. I would have thought that eating too many of the outer husks would be a little indigestible for humans and I'm not aware of an easy way of removing them. So the birds benefit, and possibly quite rightly too when you consider all the tasty snacks we humans can buy in the supermarkets !

In Spain, salted sunflower seeds are a popular snack. We used to eat them instead of sweets when we were kids. What you do is put the seed, sideways, between your front teeth and bite down quite gently. This cracks the shell allowing you access to the seed within. Slow, I know, but its amazing how much quicker you get with practice.

We always ate them on holiday and we called them "Pippas" - no idea why but they tasted good
Seedling

Thanks guys ,i'll tell her to do it by hand or feed the birds.