How to make Toasted Nuts

Toasted nuts taste better than raw nuts. Isn’t it great that toasting nuts is easy and makes your kitchen smell amazing? Toast hazelnuts, walnuts, pecan nuts, cashews and any other nut you would like yourself!

What do you need?

• An oven.
• A cookie sheet, ideally perforated for even toating.
• Parchment paper.
• An oven mitt.
• A (wooden) spoon.
• Chopping board (this is optional).
• Chopping knife (this is optional).
• Your nuts!

How to make Toasted Nuts?

• Preheat your oven to 175° degrees Celsius or 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
• Cover your cookie sheet with parchment paper.
• If your recipe requires chopped nuts, chop your nuts into pieces.
• Spread out the nuts on your covered cookie sheet.
• Important! Make sure you do not put too many nuts on your cookie sheet. The nuts should be spread out evenly, and overlap should be minimal.
• Place the cookie sheet in the oven.
• After 5 minutes, stir the nuts so they will get toasted evenly.
• Leave the nuts in the oven till they are golden brown. This will probably take another 3 to 5 minutes.
• Let your nuts cool down outside the oven.

How to store Toasted Nuts?

Store your nuts in an air-tight container and keep the container in a cool and dark place. When you store nuts in a warm place where they are exposed to light or moisture, they go rancid. This goes especially for cashews, peanuts, pecans and walnuts because they have many unsaturated lipids. When exposed to moisture, light and warm temperatures, lipid degradation starts to take place which results in the lipids falling apart into its metabolites like fatty acids. The formed metabolites taste and smell bad. They cause the characteristics associated with rancidity in nuts. To make sure you can enjoy your (toasted) nuts for as long as possible, store them in the refrigerator or freezer, in air-tight containers. Use containers made of thick plastic or glass (in the fridge) to ensure that smells or moisture does not have the chance to migrate over time.^[1]Hui, Y. H. (2006). Handbook of food science, technology, and engineering. Boca Raton: Taylor & Francis.^[2]McGee, Harold. On Food And Cooking. New York: Scribner, 2011. Print.

What to Make with Toasted Nuts?

Recipes regularly use toasted nuts as an ingredient. Aside from using them as an ingredient, toasted nuts are amazing on your ice-cream, in your yoghurt, as a snack, on bread, on desserts, on vegetables and so much more! When you store them in the freezer, they will stay good for many months, so it is a great ingredient to always have on hand in your kitchen.

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