Sunflower Seeds substitute

Best substitute

Pumpkin Seeds (Pepitas)

Use the same amount by volume as the sunflower seeds you are replacing

Best for salads

Close match

Pumpkin seeds, sold as pepitas, are the swap and go in one for one with nothing else to adjust. Chopped almonds or peanuts work just as well if nobody at the table needs to avoid nuts. Sesame seeds do the job too, but use about half the volume because they are far more insistent. In a salad, a granola, a seeded loaf or a muffin, sunflower seeds are supplying oily richness and a soft crunch, and a small amount of savoury depth once toasted, which means almost any toasted seed or chopped nut will keep the recipe working. The one place a swap fails is a multigrain or seeded bread, where the seeds are also holding moisture in the crumb, and there pepitas are the only real like-for-like.

Other sunflower seeds substitutes

Ranked, with the exact amount to use

2Chopped Almonds
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume, chopped to roughly seed size and toasted
The most likely thing to already be in the cupboard, and a fine swap wherever nut allergies are not the reason you are looking.
What changes
Chop them small, since a whole almond is much bigger than a sunflower kernel.
Best for
granola, salads, crumble and streusel toppings, trail mix, energy bars
Harder, drier and much snappier, so a salad gets a sharp crunch rather than a soft one, and the flavour is clean and distinctly almond rather than grassy. That is usually a small improvement in a sweet granola and a small loss in a savoury salad, where sunflower seeds fade politely into the background and almonds announce themselves. Obviously not an option in a nut-free context.
3Sesame Seeds
Taste and texture differ
Half the volume of sunflower seeds
Cheap, in most kitchens already, and excellent on bread and in dressings.
What changes
Toast them in a dry pan for two or three minutes until they smell nutty, and stir constantly because they burn quickly.
Best for
seeded bread toppings, salads and slaws, Asian-inspired dishes, crackers and flatbreads, sprinkling over roasted vegetables
Far stronger and more aromatic per spoonful than sunflower seeds, which is why the quantity drops, and much smaller, so you get a fine crunchy dust rather than distinct bites. That changes texture significantly: sesame coats things, sunflower seeds sit in them. Note also that sesame is now treated as a major allergen in the United States, so it is not a safe swap if you are cooking around allergies.
4Chopped Walnuts or Pecans
Different taste
Use the same amount by volume, toasted
Both are soft oily nuts, which makes them a better textural match for sunflower seeds than almonds are.
What changes
Toast for eight minutes at 180C and chop small.
Best for
granola, banana bread and muffins, salads with fruit or cheese, oatmeal toppings
The soft yielding crunch is right, and the oiliness is right, which means baked goods come out with a similar richness. What changes is flavour weight: walnuts bring a bitter tannic edge and pecans bring a caramel sweetness, and both are stronger personalities than a sunflower seed. In a savoury salad or a seeded bread, that shifts the dish rather than filling a gap.
5Hemp Hearts
Different texture
Use the same amount by volume
Nut-free, seed-based and mild, and increasingly easy to find in supermarkets.
What changes
Use them raw, since they do not really toast.
Best for
smoothies, yogurt and oatmeal toppings, sprinkling over salads, adding richness to dressings
Be clear about what this swap does and does not do. The flavour is genuinely close, soft and grassy and nutty, and hemp hearts are a good nut-free choice. But they have essentially no crunch at all, being soft and slightly creamy, so if the reason sunflower seeds are in your recipe is texture, this substitution fails completely. Excellent in a dressing or stirred into porridge, pointless as a salad topping.
6Roasted Chickpeas or Toasted Panko
Taste and texture differ
Use the same amount by volume for panko, or ¾ volume for roasted chickpeas
The nut-free and seed-free option when allergies rule out both.
What changes
Roast drained chickpeas at 200C for thirty minutes until they rattle, or toast panko in a little oil until golden.
Best for
salads, grain bowls, soup toppings, nut-free and seed-free crunch
Both give real crunch and cost almost nothing, which is the point. Neither gives you fat or nuttiness, so a granola bound partly by the oil in the seeds will come out drier and you may want an extra spoonful of oil. Both also lose their crunch fast once dressed, panko within a couple of minutes and chickpeas within about half an hour, so scatter them on at the table rather than tossing them through.

What is Sunflower Seeds?

Sunflower Seeds is Sunflower seeds, sold shelled as kernels or sunflower hearts, are small oil-rich seeds with a soft crunch and a mild grassy, faintly sweet flavour that deepens considerably once toasted.

Cooking tips

Toast them, always. Raw sunflower kernels taste bland and slightly chalky, and three or four minutes in a dry frying pan over medium heat, shaken constantly until they turn golden and smell nutty, roughly doubles their flavour. This is the difference between a salad where the seeds do something and one where they are just there.
Sunflower seeds turn baked goods green or blue-green when baking soda is in the recipe, and this catches people out badly. A compound in the seeds reacts with the alkaline batter and produces a blue-green tint in the crumb around each seed. It is completely harmless and does not affect the taste, but if you would rather avoid it, use baking powder instead of soda, add a little acid such as lemon juice, or toast the seeds first, which reduces the effect.
Check whether the packet says raw, roasted or roasted and salted before you measure the salt in your recipe. Salted kernels are heavily salted, and a cup of them in a bread dough or a granola will make the whole batch taste seasoned. Buy raw if you plan to bake with them and salt the dish yourself.
Buy shelled kernels, not the striped in-shell kind sold as a snack. The in-shell seeds are meant for cracking between your teeth, and shelling a cup of them by hand takes a genuinely unpleasant amount of time. Kernels are also often labelled sunflower hearts, which is the same thing.
Store them in the fridge or freezer. Sunflower seeds are high in polyunsaturated oil, which means they go rancid noticeably faster than most nuts and start tasting bitter and paint-like within a few months in a warm cupboard. Taste one before adding a whole cup to something you have worked on.

Frequently asked questions

Can I use sunflower seeds instead of nuts in a recipe?

Yes, and this is one of the most useful swaps in nut-free baking. Use them one for one by volume in place of chopped walnuts, pecans or almonds in muffins, banana bread, cookies, granola, crumble toppings and salads, and toast them first so they hold their own. Expect the result to taste grassier and less rich than a nut version, and expect the crunch to be softer. In something where the nut is the headline flavour, like a walnut cake or butter pecan, the swap keeps the texture but changes the dish.

Why did my muffins turn green where the sunflower seeds were?

Chlorogenic acid in the seeds reacting with the baking soda in your batter, and it is completely harmless. The green or blue-green ring around each seed is a colour change only, with no effect on taste or safety, and it is a well-known quirk of baking with sunflower seeds and sunflower seed butter. If it bothers you, switch some of the baking soda for baking powder, add a squeeze of lemon juice or a spoonful of yogurt to acidify the batter, or toast the seeds before adding them.

Are pepitas really as good a swap as they sound?

Yes, better than most substitutions on this site, because they occupy almost exactly the same role: nut-free, oil-rich, mildly nutty and crunchy at the same scale. The differences are cosmetic and slight, a greener colour, a more mineral taste, a slightly softer chew. The only recipes where you would notice properly are ones with a pale crumb or a delicate dressing, where the green shows, and even then it looks intentional rather than wrong.

Can I just leave the sunflower seeds out?

In most cases yes, with no other change. In a salad, granola, muffin or trail mix they are an addition, so leaving them out gives you a slightly less interesting version of the same thing. The place to be careful is seeded or multigrain bread, where a substantial quantity of seeds is holding moisture and adding fat to the crumb, so removing them without replacing the volume gives a drier, tighter loaf. Swap in an equal volume of another seed rather than simply omitting them there.

What is the difference between raw, roasted and dry roasted sunflower seeds?

Raw seeds are untoasted and taste mild and slightly chalky, and they are the ones to buy for cooking because you control the toasting and the salt. Roasted seeds have been heated in oil, so they are richer and often salted. Dry roasted have been heated without oil and are usually salted too. For baking, buy raw. For snacking or a last-minute salad topping, roasted is fine, just reduce the salt elsewhere in the dish.

Related substitutes

More nuts & seeds substitutes

Sunflower Seeds substitute

Other sunflower seeds substitutes

2Chopped Almonds

3Sesame Seeds

4Chopped Walnuts or Pecans

5Hemp Hearts

6Roasted Chickpeas or Toasted Panko