I like the texture of brazil nuts. I like to just shave it against my bottom incisors. Which Now that I have written it, I suppose it very wierd, but very few other food have that same interesting texture, coconut is similar though.
Cracking walnuts is fun. Doing all the processing to peel the flesh off is not.
How many pieces do you crack it into? I had two rats as a kid, brothers. One would always crack the shell into two pieces, the other three pieces. It was uncanny.
WTF pic. You can use the fruit part as well, most notably to get drunk.
Or Rickon Stark.
Disproof of the parity rule, right there in your own living room.
Two or four, but I ain’t no rat.
Can anybody tell me about Pine nuts? I love them in Asian dishes and in the little bags like peanuts come in at the snack counter. But are they in shells or what?
Cool! Thanks.
The toughest nuts to crack, by far, are black walnuts. Normal nutcrackers won’t work on them at all. There are special nutcrackers made for them that use multiple compound leverage. Some people put them in sacks and drive their cars over them. However you do it, you’ll end up with bits and pieces of nutmeat, not nice walnut halves like you can get with English walnuts.
There are some varieties of almond that have shells so thin you can remove them with your fingers. These can be as much fun to eat as peanuts.
In answer to Zeldar, pine nuts are usually sold with the shells removed. The shells are very thin and easy to crack, although they don’t separate into two neat pieces like sunflower seed shells do. Pine nuts roasted in the shell are a real pleasure - they have more flavor than pre-shelled pine nuts - but good luck finding them.
Thanks for the info, Jeff Lichtman.
Side issue: does anybody know what’s the largest nut? Apparently NOT the Coconut! 
The kid’s boyfriend saw a bowl of pecans on my coffee table and asked what they were. We told him what they were and he asked how to get the meat out of the shell. We said just crack them in your hands and proceeded to do so. He tries and tries unsuccessfully, looking a bit embarrassed. He only had one in his hand! So, he tries two, and immediately turns one into mush.
There’s some nut cracking fun for ya.
You fight ignorance, Sir. I had believed the pine cone scales to be their shells.
Here ya go, Zeldar- coco de mer
Far out! Need some for cookies or candy!
Man, I can’t believe you didn’t know that!
Err… I only learned it at like age 27 or something when the host served them at a party, and also learned that pinyon was a pine and not some unrelated bush thing.:smack:
An interesting thing about Brazil nuts is that there are two layers of shell. We’re used to seeing only the inner shell. The nuts in the inner shells grow in clusters inside the outer shell, sort of like orange segments inside the peel of an orange. Here is a pretty good photo of the nuts in the outer shell with the top removed.
Another interesting thing is that Brazil nuts are collected from the wild rather than cultivated. There have been attempts at Brazil nuy plantations, but yields are very low.
I like Brazil nuts too (and shave them as wolfmandoes, but with my top incisors).
Re the “common name”: I once ran across a set of Brazils painted to look like slices of watermelon. That seemed somehow appropriate…
Fuckin’ hilarious.
Top Incisors?!
SHUN THE FREAK! SHUN THE FREAK!
I use my molars, as G-d intended.
Burn the heretics!
:rolleyes:
From Merriam-Webster:
a (1): a hard-shelled dry fruit or seed with a separable rind or shell and interior kernel
(2): the kernel of a nut
b: a dry indehiscent one-seeded fruit with a woody pericarp
This is for the benefit of the people who didn’t bother to look up what the definition of ‘nut’, and that implied that it referes specifically to ‘true nuts,’ which definition b describes.