Anyways, homemade roast nuts are a great holiday present. Nuts contain high levels of omega-3 fatty acids and are great for hearth health, so this is really a gift that keeps on giving! If you can figure out a good source for raw nuts and package them in a repurposed jar, this can be a really cost effective gift too. In Cambridge, raw almonds are $2.99/ package at Market Basket and raw sunflower seeds are $1.99/ package at Trader Joe's. Peanuts can also usually be found on the cheap! Below are two of my favorite recipes that I've developed. If you like the idea, but are worried about nut allergies, sunflower seeds work great for any of the coatings!
Maple Cinnamon Pumpkin Nuts (I recommend almonds and cashews!)
1/2c pumpkin puree
1/4c brown sugar
1/4c maple syrup
1T brown sugar
2-3c raw nuts
Preheat oven to 375F. Mix all of the ingredients except the nuts in a bowl until smooth. Add the nuts and stir to coat. Spread the mixture evenly on a greased baking sheet. Bake for 25 minutes, stirring every 10 minutes. The nuts will still feel soft when you take them out, but they will harden upon cooling!
Chocolate Cinnamon Nuts (This works great with sunflower seeds and hazelnuts!)
1/3c cocoa powder
1/3c brown sugar
1/4c warm tap water (the warmth melts the oil and helps everything combine more smoothly)
1T cinnamon
1T coconut oil
2-3c raw nuts
Follow the directions above, using the chocolate ingredients. Same thing goes, they will be soft even when they are ready, so resist the temptation to over cook!
Thank you! I was looking for a good gift-in-jar for my siblings. This will probably be the one I go with. :-)
ReplyDeleteMy brother enjoyed the nuts! Though honestly, I think they could have used an extra 5-10 minutes in the oven. :-P I ended up making Russian tea mix-in-a-jar for my sister because she is a tea/cocoa/sweet hot drink lover.
DeleteAwesome! Gonna make a jar of each for my Mom.
ReplyDeleteSounds great! Do you know of any nutritional differences between raw and roasted nuts? My research has proved unfruitful :/
ReplyDeleteHey Laurissa, great question! It all has to do with enzymes. Raw nuts (and raw foods in general) have natural digestive enzymes, which are denatured (i.e. deactivated because the temperature gives them the energy to fold in different ways so that they don't work) when cooked at higher temperatures. They also have enzyme inhibitors, so most of the time, you don't get that many enzymes from raw foods. The soaking process helps to get rid of those enzyme inhibitors, so this is why soaking nuts has become popular. The theory with the raw diet is that you get all of these enzymes. However, raw food is usually harder to digest, so you need more digestive enzymes to digest the food anyways! As you pointed out, there aren't too many resources that explain it, so that's my take on it from my science point of view. Most roast nuts also use added salt and oils, which can be less healthy than the native nut oils. Hope you find that to be a good answer!
Deletemmmm i love roasted nuts!!! I have done some myself in the past -IIRC orange juice, maple syrup, cayenne and rosemary??
ReplyDeleteI just finished the chocolate cinnamon sunflower seeds... I am definitely going to have to make myself some more - hopefully they come out as good as the ones you made
ReplyDelete