{"id":596,"date":"2008-08-09T00:02:22","date_gmt":"2008-08-09T05:02:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/?p=596"},"modified":"2008-09-04T20:24:31","modified_gmt":"2008-09-05T01:24:31","slug":"soy-sauce-watermelon-seed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/?p=596","title":{"rendered":"Soy Sauce Watermelon Seed"},"content":{"rendered":"


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\nMan I got a lot of lot of snacks when I stopped by Hua Xing. I hadn’t planned to get a month plus of things to review but one thing lead to another and the next thing you know I’m throwing Soy Sauce Watermelon Seeds in my shopping cart because…what? I sat there looking at this package thinking “You crazy Taiwanese, WTH??!? watermelon<\/u> seeds?” Then I thought, “Well yeah, we’ve been known to roast up a couple pumpkin seeds here in the States and a watermelon isn’t so very different from a pumpkin on the grand scheme of things. Point Taiwan, I’ll give ’em a go.”<\/p>\n

Because really? If you think of all the seeds in the world, pumpkin and watermelon are pretty similar in size and shape. Of course one comes from a fruit and the other from a vegetable (squash…whatever) and one is black while the other is white but when you compare them to an apricot pit…pretty similar. I rather like a nicely roasted pumpkin seed so after my initial “WHAT!??!” moment I was intrigued. What would be the difference? I wanted to know!<\/p>\n


\nI wished I had taken a look at the ingredients first though. Do you spot the oddity? Watermelon seed…check. Coconut oil…OoooKay…I guess you might need an oil for roasting. Salt…oh yeah. Soy sauce…it’s mentioned in the name. Liquorice…<\/p>\n

Wait. Liquorice? Like…Licorice? Ahhhhh…What? You would think they might mention that somewhere on the front because licorice is a pretty prominent flavor. I’d have wanted to know about the licorice right up there with the soy sauce and the watermellon seeds and not as a small footnote in the ingredients list on the back. We were all a tad surprised by the unexpected licorice and let me warn you now; licorice isn’t a flavor you want sneaking up on you.<\/p>\n

Licorice isn’t really a flavor you want paired with salty soy either. Or faintly fruity. In fact, licorice is a flavor you probably only want paired up with licorice (and then absolutely marked on the package that there will be a licoricing in said package) and pretty much nothing else although you might get away sneaking in a vanilla if you are clever. We were not on board with the salty soy licorice at all. We weren’t even in the station.<\/p>\n

We might have liked these a whole lot better sans licorice save the unfortunate texture of the seeds. I’m not sure they were roasted as much as they were soaked in soy licorice and then left somewhere to dry. There’s a reason one roasts pumpkin seeds and that is because if you have them raw or dried they are incredibly gnaw-y. Roasted seeds are nicely crispity. Dried seeds are unpleasantly fibrous. I do not like chewing on a licorice flavored soy fruit seed for five minutes in order to break the seed up enough to eat it. As one of my Guinea Pigs remarked, “These are like iron clad pumpkin seeds. They would probably burn really well though.”<\/p>\n


\nFibery!<\/p>\n


\nSadly, the prospect of burning the seeds, a good strong soy flavor and this little fella were about the only redeeming qualities of the soy watermelon seeds. I have no idea what that little GMP guy is about, but he’s sure is A-OK with something.<\/p>\n

I’m not dismissing roasted watermelon seeds as a whole because I think it can be done right and the idea still intrigues me. I am dismissing these Soy Sauce Watermelon (ninjalicorice) Seeds because they just aren’t good. I’ll give them kudos for effort and a decently good soy flavor but I can’t<\/p>\n

Rate<\/a> them more than 1 wasabi pea<\/strong> out of a possible 5 wasabi peas.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,16],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-596","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-10-peas","category-savory"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=596"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/596\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=596"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=596"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quirkspace.com\/jsfr\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=596"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}