Toasting nuts brings out a deeper and richer flavor. Whenever we use nuts in cooking–even to simply garnish a salad, we always use them toasted.
The premise is quite simple: use high heat and short cooking time to toast the outside. When following the directions below, keep in mind that it’s a better result to slightly under-toast than to burn the nut, so if you are unsure, err on the side of the shorter cooking time in the range below. This is especially true for delicate pine nuts.
Directions
- Preheat the oven to 350 degrees.
- Line a baking sheet with a single layer of nuts.
- Toast 5-10 minutes until the outside is golden brown (no black…that’s burnt!) and the nuts smell toasty.
The Best Nuts for Toasting
These are the nuts that we most commonly use in cooking or toss onto a salad:
- Walnuts
- Pecans
- Hazelnuts
- Pine Nuts (given their small size, err on the side of 5 rather than 10 minutes)
- Peanuts
- Macadamia nuts
- Almonds
I can almost smell the roasting nuts now! I’ve been doing this for years.
Roasted nuts don’t keep for as long as raw nuts, so don’t do too many all at once!
Try soaking then in tamari sauce (wheat free – make sure the tamari sauce is wheat free!) for just long enough to coat the nuts – actually, just sprinkling it on top of the nuts, and mix them up. That makes the nuts really yummy – especially almonds.
[...] the previous post I made on this blog, do not toast the nuts. Use them [...]