Roast Your Nuts!
On roasting nuts for healthy snacking. Notes of experience from our own experiments in roasting nuts at home. Some information on soaking nuts before roasting them as well.
CARE
Nicole Lasam
4/30/20264 min read
Roasted nuts. They’re delicious, they smell awesome, and they’re good for you! Nuts are a good healthy alternative to common snack foods (like, say, tortilla chips, biscuits, or cookies) as they provide healthy fats, fiber, protein, vitamins, and minerals. According to the Mayo Clinic, eating them (in the right portions) is good for your heart.
But what I notice with roasted nuts is that they’re better when you buy them raw or blanched and then you roast them yourself, instead of buying them roasted already. That’s because when you roast them yourself, you know that you didn’t add any salt (or if you did, you know the amount). The last bag of roasted peanuts we bought just tasted like salt and had none of the natural sweetness of the peanuts we roasted in our own oven. So, from then on, we roasted nuts ourselves.
How do we like our roasted nuts? We like them simply roasted in the oven with no seasonings. Some people soak the nuts first (more on this later), and there are recipes to make them salted or honey-roasted. But we like them plain because this way we can taste the natural flavor better. (Even the children like it like this, too.)
Of course, getting the hang of roasting nuts takes a little time because it depends on the ambient humidity of where you are, the heat of your particular oven (and perhaps also its size), and how many nuts you plan to roast. But if roasting your own nuts is one health resolution you’d like to make, then the time taken to study and experiment will be time well spent!
Roasting times
In our kitchen, we use a small oven toaster for… well, for everything—roasting, toasting, baking, and dehydrating. Our oven toaster can roast nuts about 250 g at a time. If your oven comes with a baking sheet like ours, you can spread the 250 g (more if your oven is bigger) of nuts so they are evenly spread on the baking sheet. Turn the heat up to desired temperature and roast for the required amount of time.
Below is a list of nuts we roast, their roasting temperature, and time. These numbers can be your basis for testing the best time and temps for your own oven. Things to watch out for when roasting are the aroma of and the sheen on the nuts as their natural oils come out. These are your markers for knowing if they are roasting nicely and are almost done. As you roast more nuts, you’ll get better at it and can then look forward to better snacking times ahead.
1. Walnuts. Buy walnuts raw. Measure them out to fit your baking sheet and roast them at 160˚C (320˚F) for 7 minutes.
2. Peanuts. Buy peanuts raw. Again, measure them out to fit your baking sheet and roast them at 120˚C (240˚F) for 7 minutes.
3. Cashews. Raw cashews are harder to roast because of their shape (thinner on one end and thicker on the other) so you might need to stir them around halfway through roasting. Measure them out to fit your baking sheet and roast them at 120˚C (240˚F) for 7-10 minutes.
4. Hazelnuts. We buy our hazelnuts blanched, so our roasting time and temperature are for blanched nuts. Measure them out to fit your baking sheet and roast them at 120˚C (240˚F) for 7 minutes.
Once your nuts are done roasting, take them out of the oven so they don’t burn. (I learned the hard way that if you forget to take them out, the leftover heat when the oven turns off is enough to let the nuts continue on roasting, resulting in burned, inedible nuts.) Cool down the nuts by airing them out in the baking sheet on a cooling rack. Keep the rack out of children’s reach; the smell of newly roasted nuts invites them to get before they are cool. When they have cooled down, you can keep them in an airtight container, ready for snacking.
On soaking nuts
Honestly, I have never tried soaking nuts. I recently discovered that doing so helps you digest them better. According to the Gut Health Doctor, “the main reason for soaking… is the phytate content. Phytates can affect the absorption and reduce the bioavailability of several micronutrients, which is why it’s often referred to as an ‘anti-nutrient.’ Soaking certain phytate containing plants first can reduce the concentration of phytates.” Another name for phytates is phytic acid.
If you haven’t been soaking your nuts, worry not! The Gut Health Doctor explains that apart from that, phytates are not bad for you—they are antioxidants that “have been linked to protection against kidney stones and cancer.” In other words, enjoy your roasted nuts in different ways: you can soak them first for a creamier crunch, or roast them raw—in the whole scheme of things, nuts in any preparation are good for you.