SUMMER EXPERIMENTS : NUTS

This summer I am doing some minor kitchen experiments! I want to try to make my own chocolate, different type of raw food and I will get that ice-cream production running again. Today it is time for NUTS. Recipes in the bottom of the post.

Experimenting with different kind of nuts is like the best chemistry lesson ever. Nuts and seeds contains a great amount of fat - of the healthy kind - which creates BUTTER when being released in the blending process. Amazing!

1. SOAKING & DEHYDRATING

Besides the fat - and a lot of other healthy stuff - nuts also contains phytic acid. It is a protection for the seed (after all it is the plants way of reproducing itself), preventing it from being destroyed before planted. It also prevents who- or whatever happens to consume the nut to absorb the nutrition it is jam-packed with. The acid makes it difficult to digest the nut - some people might get stomach ache because of this. Therefore it is important to "trick" the seed into thinking it is time to grow by soaking it in a bowl of water over the night. After soaked it needs to be completely dehydrated again, to prevent mold growth and if there is any water in the nuts when you make butter, the mixture will seperate. About 6 hours in 100°C with the oven door ajar and then in the open air over night was enough for me - you can feel the nuts being hard again when completely dry, if they feel a bit spongy they need to dry more.

What more I found was the taste being improved a lot! The soaked and dehydrated nuts where sweet and packed with flavour - no bitterness at all.

2. PROCESS & FLAVOUR

This is the fun part! Place the nuts in a food processor or mixer and put it on low speed - if it is to high the mixture will rise up the edges and stick there. Every two minutes or so you need to scrape mixture from the sides or shake the machine a little; but be patient it, will turn liquid! If you think if takes too much time you can add a little oil, preferably coconut oil or any other nut oil. Just when in starts to liquify or become a pleasant paste it is time to flavour the butter. If you want a sweeter variant - like home made nutella - you can add a sweetener such as honey, coconut sugar, syrup of some sort or normal white sugar. Otherwise spices like cardamom, cinnamon, ginger or seasalt, cocoa and vanilla give delicious tingle to the butter!

3. EAT OR STORE

You may notice the mixture gets all warm when processing it. Releasing oils takes quite some energy, and some of that turns into heat. Make sure you taste a spoonful of the nut butter while it is warm, yum!

The butter will last in a galss jar for at least a few weeks in the refrigerator, unless you eat it all before that!

Hazelnuts and almonds.

Soaking hazelnuts, almonds, peanuts and cashews over night.

Dehydrating nuts.

The HUGIN food processor from 1974 has been dusted off this summer and been assigned the place of honour on the kitchen top. It works perfectly!

Home made nutella, vanilla & almond, salted and natural peanut.

Two words: silky & delicious.

RECIPES:

NUTELLA (from tasty-yummies.com)

250 g hazelnuts

1 tbsp coconut oil (or any other nut oil)

1/2 dl raw cacao or cocoa powder

​1 dl unsweetened almond milk or coconut milk

1 tsp vanilla extract or powder

1/2 dl coconut sugar or other sweetener

1/4 tsp fine sea salt

1. Soak the nuts over night.

2. Dehydrate in 100°C for about 6-8 hours until completey dry. If you have the time, let them dry a bit more in the open air over night. (If there is any water in the nuts the butter with split). If you want to you can roast them for 10-15 min in 175°C, to get a little extra flavour. I thought mine had so much flavour already so I did not roast them.

2. Put the nuts in a damp kitchen towel. Close the towel up and rub the nuts vigorously to loosen their skins. Take the nuts without their skins out of the towel and place into the bowl of the processor. Continue rubbing until you get the skins off the rest of the nuts. There will always be a few stubborn ones that just won’t release their skins.

3. Add all nuts in the food processor. Grind to a fine powder and add the coconut oil. Continue processing until it becomes smooth and creamy, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl every minute or two. This may take 12-15 minutes (possibly longer) depending on the strength of your food processor.

4. When the hazelnuts has turned into creamy butter, add the remaining ingredients slowly and keep processing and scraping down the bowl until silky smooth.

Enjoy a big spoonful while it is warm. Store in the fridge.

ALMOND & VANILLA BUTTER

250 g almonds

1/2 dl coconut flakes

1 tsp vanilla extract or powder

some cardamom and ginger if you want

1 pinch of sea salt

1. Soak the nuts over night.

2. Dehydrate in 100°C for about 6-8 hours until completey dry. If you have the time, let them dry a bit more in the open air over night. (If there is any water in the nuts the butter with split). If you want to you can roast them for 10-15 min in 175°C, to get a little extra flavour. I thought mine had so much flavour already so I did not roast them.

2. Add the nuts and coconut flakes to your food processor. Process until it becomes smooth and creamy, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl every minute or two. This may take 2 minutes or 15 minutes, depending on the strength of your food processor.

4. When creamy and silky add the vanilla, cardamom, ginger and salt and process a few more seconds. Store in the fridge.

PEANUT BUTTER

250 g peanuts (in Sweden there are only salted peanuts in the food store. But it's okay, most of the salt will disappear when being soaked)

1 pinch of salt

1. Soak the nuts over night.

2. Dehydrate in 100°C for about 6-8 hours until completey dry. If you have the time, let them dry a bit more in the open air over night. (If there is any water in the nuts the butter with split). If you want to you can roast them for 10-15 min in 175°C, to get a little extra flavour. I thought mine had so much flavour already so I did not roast them.

2. Put the nuts into your food processor. Process until it becomes smooth and creamy, stopping to scrape down the sides of the bowl every minute or two. This may take 2 minutes or 15 minutes, depending on the strength of your food processor.

4. When creamy and silky add salt if you want salted peanut butter, but I promise natural is very tasty as well. Store in the fridge.

Enjoy!

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