Pumpkin seed oil is an unrefined vegetable oil obtained by the traditional pressing and roasting of pumpkin seeds and can be recognized by its dark green to reddish colour and nutty aroma. There are problems with its insufficient salinity. As part of the master's thesis, we prepared 6 samples of pumpkin oil with different additions of water (6 L, 8 L, 9 L, 10 L) and salt (0,5 kg, 1 kg, 1,5 kg), resulting in the production of different concentrated salt solutions (5,9 %, 9,1 %, 10,0 %, 11,1 %, 14,3 %, 15,8 %) when roasting the seeds. We included 3 other commercial samples of pumpkin seed oil in the study. We can conclude that the amount of added water or salt, as well as the different brine concentrations within our experiment, did not affect the fatty acid composition or the content of free fatty acids and iodine number, while slight deviations were observed in the values for peroxide numbers, content of conjugated dienes and trienes, radical scavenging ability, lecithin, salt, and sodium content, and oxidative stability of the differently prepared oils. No correlation was found between the lecithin content and sodium levels in the oils. We determined that a higher addition of water or salt, or a more concentrated brine during the roasting of pumpkin seeds, does not guarantee a higher salt (or sodium) content, which was confirmed by both chemical and sensory analysis.
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