How to prepare hazel nuts?
Asked by
Vincentt (
8094
)
July 23rd, 2011
I tried making broccoli pesto yesterday, and stumbled over having to add hazel nuts. I’ve never done anything with them, but figured I’d just buy them and look up what to do with them.
Looking around the internet, I drew the conclusion that I had to heat them in the oven for a while and then remove the shell with a towel or something. However, when I took them out of the oven after the specified time, they were completely black, and didn’t come out of the shell easily.
I finally just grabbed a hammer to break the shell, and took out the insides (including the brown skin, of which I had no idea how to remove them) which I then used in the pesto. To prevent this in the future, does anybody know what the correct way of preparing hazel nuts is?
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5 Answers
The oven thing is actually the classic way to remove the skin from the kernel, not the shell. Removing the shell is a simple hammer or nutcracker proposition; it’s the skin that’s hard to get off. Shell them, then roast them. The skin becomes dry and flaky in the oven, and rubbing them vigorously in a towel will flake off most of the skin, but some patches will stick tenaciously anyway. That’s really just a cosmetic annoyance, as there’s nothing unsavory about the skin.
First, use shelled hazelnuts. Then, heat them in a pan over medium heat until you can start to smell them. Then add them to the dish.
@thorninmud Thanks! But then, why remove the skin in the first place? Sounds like a lot of trouble for a cosmetic annoyance.
@marinelife With shelled hazelnuts you mean shelled as in: with both skin and shell? Do they become edible when you heat them in a pan? (And do you mean just a normal frying pan?)
@Vincentt Yes, the skins would be off too. It is not that they become edible when you heat them. It is that toasting them enhances their flavor. Yes, a normal frying pan.
@Vincentt You could certainly not remove the skins, but you do need to roast the hazelnuts to develop their flavor (an unroasted hazelnut is boring as hell), and the skins turn pretty dark during roasting. You would end up with lots of little black flecks once you grind them in your pesto.
If you can find blanched hazelnuts (this is what they’re called when the skin is removed), then by all means use those.
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