Guidelines for creating meals with nuts
Nuts are a staple ingredient amongst the fellowship of chefs. They are so common and ingrained in our culture it's very hard to think of the variety of recipes we make these days without them. Excellent results are generally about excellent ingredients though, so knowing your nuts is essential when creating appetising dishes.
Some foods wil absorb smells more easily than others. This typically happens with food that is full of fat. Nuts have plentiful fat content, ergo they take on the aromas of nearby food easily. Aromatic vegetables left next to nuts will transfer their aroma to the nuts over time. Don't leave nuts exposed near other food if you want to prevent this issue. Put them in their own bag or container, made ideally from glass or heavy duty plastic. Smells can travel though a thin layer of plastic so you wil require something robust if you tend not to use glass.
When purchasing nuts you may ask yourself whether you want to get them with or without their shells. As you might imagine the nut's shell will help conserve and protect the nut inside. Consider how you want to use them - buying in bulk to use over a long period pretty much requires buying with their shells on. This will depend on how many nuts you use in your cooking. If you use them a lot (and we think you will) the saving from being willing to shell them yourself could be substantial.
A good cook will always do the right things before using nuts. Prior to putting them in the recipe, tasting the nuts is important. Indicators of decay are by no means obvious with nuts, as it is with most other food, so this precaution is highly necessary. It's clear if you've bitten into a decayed nut though, you won't want to eat it! You can expect your company to react the same way to any food you put a rancid nut in, as the revolting flavour will carry over into the final dish. Ensure you taste the nuts before adding them to avoid culinary catastrophe.
Even choosing where to purchase your nuts can be important, try a shop that doesn't hold onto it's inventory selling small amounts every now and then. Nuts go bad so the longer they've been hanging around at the shop the less time you'll have to store them.
Think about the example of buying from one of the smaller corner shops in any neighborhood. They have a tendency to have very gradual stock turnover. You might end up buying walnuts that have been hanging around for a buyer for 4 months. Their storage lifetime could be over by the time you get the chance to buy them.
Lengthier storage times at home can usually be achieved by buying your nuts at a store with faster turnover, which is usually a large store or chain which has a sophisticated supply chain and might deal in a huge amount of nuts every day.
About the Author
David Pruitt is a kitchen design and appliance expert with a history in manufacturing design and living engineering. He gives his thoughts regularly at Delonghi Microwave and American Fridge Freezers.