To me, especially around holiday season, the hazelnut is the perfect nut.
It’s delicious on it’s own, shelled in it’s native state. But even better, as nature intended, surrounded by dark chocolate.
Now you. Share your favourites and how you like to eat them.
I like pretty much all nuts. I guess if there was a buffet of nuts and I could only take one, it would be (in order):
Macadamia
Cashew (not technically a nut, but neither are Sunflower Seeds, which I’d put about here.)
Dry-Roasted Peanut
Virginia Peanut/Salted-in-Shell Peanut
Almond (roasted, no flavor)
Walnut
Any of the above in a good chocolate dip, so much the better. Well, not the in-shell peanuts.
I really like Brazil nuts, but I don’t eat them too often because of all the Radium…
Macadamia nuts are wonderful, but I think Pistachios are my favorite.
But, the nuts I eat the most are Almonds, simply roasted, no salt.
Cashews. By the double handful. Om nom nom.
Mmm, love cashews. Also peanuts - lightly salted or honey-roasted - and Smokehouse almonds by the handful (although I try to restrain myself).
I’m allergic, and they’re even harder to avoid around the holidays.
BAH HUMBUG TO NUTS.
Why are you singling cashews out in particular? None of the others you listed are “true” botanical nuts, either. Of the popular nuts, only hazelnuts/filberts and chestnuts are botanical nuts.
They used to be a festive season thing for me, but due to their health benefits I now regularly buy mixed shelled nuts (hazelnut, walnut, brazil nut, almond) and eat them all year round, most days in fact.
Seconded. All the cashews. Preferably honey roasted, but I’ll take 'em plain, if that’s all you’ve got.
I am making another 1.2 pounds of cinnamon maple pecans today, in fact.
Also, cashews and pistachios totally fucking rock!
I will take a pound of those … you know, so I don’t completely deplete your stock.
Anyhow, my favorites are cashews, followed by walnuts. Cashews can be quite rich and filling, though, so walnuts are a nice change-of-pace and counterpoint to them. I was surprised at the last nut poll at how many people just don’t like walnuts–I guess I developed a particular fondness for them at my grandfather’s house, who always had walnuts (shell-in) at his kitchen table, and, as a kid, I loved splitting open that shell and picking out the walnuts with their their papery skin out. I prefer them to pecans, even.
Oooh, there’s a memory. My grandmother had a wooden nut bowl with the bark on the outside and a sort of little tower-thing in the middle with holes for the nutcracker and four metal picks. Yep - I’ve done my share of walnut surgery.
However, they really need to be utterly surrounded by fudge to show their true glory.
I have similar fond memories from my childhood of my grandfather breaking walnuts for me with his huge working man hands. He was the gentlest of giants to me.
NUT’S!
The easiest way I’ve found to open them is to stick a butter knife (a regular knife will work, but it’s a bit dangerous if it slips) into the seam on the top of the walnut (I’m defining “top” as the less pointy end, so, the top part in this picture of a split walnut.) Jam it in there, twist the knife, and it should split into two neat halves. Some walnuts have a seam too tight to do this, so for those, it’s off to the nutcracker. (Now that I think about it, I may be misremembering about the papery skin part. Maybe it just was the “nut.” For some reason, I thought they had a thin skin like peanuts, but the pictures I’ve been looking at, it doesn’t seem they do. It’s been many years since I’ve walnuts in shell, just the stuff you can get in the baking aisle.)
Appropriate for the season, and the thread topic (see under “World War II”): Anthony McAuliffe - Wikipedia
Also kinda-sorta appropriate for the topic: Harlan Pepper’s discourse on nuts.
I like em raw or roasted…
Pecans
Cashews
Peanuts
Pistachios
Almonds
I usually pass on: hazelnuts, macadamias, walnuts,
Oh and filberts…can’t stand filberts.
Love them all. If forced to choose, I’d pick pistachios and walnuts for favorites.