What is the Purpose of Blanching Nuts?

The skin on almonds, peanuts, and hazelnuts has a bitter taste. When using nuts in baked goods or to make nut flour, you don’t want the items to have a bitter flavor from the skin of the nuts. You can eliminate the bitterness by blanching the nuts.

How to Blanch Hazelnuts and Peanuts

It takes very little time to blanch nuts at home. To prepare 1/2 cup of blanched hazelnuts, bring 1 1/2 cups of water to a boil. Then add 2 tablespoons of baking soda and the hazelnuts to the water. Boil for 3 minutes. Remove one hazelnut from the boiling water and put it in a bowl of ice-cold water. If the skin easily slips off, remove the hazelnuts from the hot water and put them in the ice-cold water for about 15 seconds. Drain the nuts in a colander. You will need to squeeze each nut one at a time, to remove the skin. The process goes more quickly than you would think.

The process for blanched peanuts is very similar to hazelnuts. There’s no need to add baking soda to the water when blanching peanuts. The blanching time is still 3 minutes. After 3 minutes, put peanuts in a bowl to cool. When cooled, simply rub the peanuts between your fingers to remove the skin.

Almonds

It takes less than 5 minutes to prepare blanched almonds. All you have to do is bring a pot of water to a boil and put the almonds in the boiling water for 60 seconds. Drain the almonds and rinse them with cold water. When cooled, squeeze each almond to get the nut to pop out of the skin. Blanching almonds is a faster way to prepare them for use in baked good recipes or to use to make almond flour. Blanched roasted almonds are a healthy snack food and delicious trail mix ingredient.

Nutritional Value

Blanched hazelnuts, blanched peanuts, and blanched almonds retain the nutritional value they have in their raw state. Blanched roasted almonds have a buttery, earthy flavor without the bitterness raw almonds can have. Blanched peanuts can be used to make peanut butter. They can also be added to snack mixes without their papery skins being a nuisance.