What is the best nut? Photo / The Spinoff
Originally published by The Spinoff.
THREE KEY FACTS
Shanti is a staff writer at The Spinoff.
OPINION
At long last, The Spinoff shells out for a nut ranking.
It recently came to The Spinoff’s attention that while we had ranked the beans of the world not once but twice, we had never ranked nuts. Nuts are an extremely glorious type of food, enjoyed by people around the world of all dietary persuasions. They contain lots of nutrition, and they’re also very versatile in sweet and savoury meals alike.
There is a lot of debate about nuts on the internet: it’s impossible to mention peanuts without some enterprising pedant popping out of the bushes to say that actually, peanuts are legumes. According to botanists (who would know), nuts are a type of fruit made up of a hard shell surrounding a single seed. But technically many other so-called nuts are not really nuts, including coconuts, almonds and cashews.
Instead, they are “drupes”, meaning they have a fleshy outside, and a shell covering a seed on the inside. There’s also the case of pine nuts, which are technically a seed (since there are lots of them inside a single pinecone, not just one). With that in mind, this ranking includes seeds that grow directly on plants and are considered or called nuts and/or have “nut” as part of their name and are readily available in New Zealand.
There are a number of items with names that include the word “nut” that don’t otherwise meet this definition.
Nuts and bolts: Very useful, probably prevent several of the items in your life you use most from falling apart. Crunchy, but should not be eaten.
Gingernuts: Also very useful, and can, like nuts and bolts, be used in a workshop – maybe as an anvil, or the surface of a very small stool? Crunchy, can be eaten.
Doughnuts: They’re made of dough, obviously, but are they called nuts because they come in a range of sizes and shapes, are often brown and white, and are full of oil? Usually not crunchy, can be eaten.
Knut the Great/Cnut the Great/Canute the Great: Ruled England, Norway and Denmark, AKA a busy man. Descended from the excellently named Harald Bluetooth, Knut’s father Svein Forkbeard defeated Saxon king Aethelred the Unready (maybe because Aethelred was unready?). When Forkbeard died, Aethelred took the throne again, while Knut rallied his forces in Denmark, waited for various people to die, then took over England again and married Aethelred’s widow. He ended up governing a large part of northern Europe and died in 1035. Couldn’t hold back the tide. Not crunchy (as far as we know), can’t be eaten (because he has been dead for a millennium).
Before we launch into the ranking proper, let us first begin with a moment of silence for people who are allergic to nuts.
Chestnuts are so deceptive with their spiky layer concealing a smooth interior and are exciting to grow or forage. However, they’re not very widespread in Aotearoa because they don’t stay fresh for long and their pellicle (the thin brown coating) doesn’t peel off easily. Making them taste good is even harder – they need lots of roasting because they’re quite astringent when raw, and often end up being pulverised into flour or covered with sugar, concealing their nutty origin. It’s been a while since I had a great roast chestnut, and I would like to try more in the future to see if their ranking can be improved.
The problem with this South American nut is that it simply doesn’t taste good enough to make it worth its big size. I don’t want to have to take multiple bites of a nut, or feel that I have to open my mouth wide enough to expose my tonsils to the breeze just to take a bite. Yes, Brazil nuts have lots of selenium, an essential micronutrient that is low in New Zealand soils, but a single nut contains plenty, making it easy to overdose. They take so long to chew that they’re more like a meal than a snack.
Nutmeg gets lots of points for being pretty on the inside, and also pulling double duty – the spice mace is derived from its exterior. Mostly grown in Indonesia’s Banda Islands with a nasty colonial history, nutmeg also loses points for its speckled interior describing a liver disease. However, it is not last on this list because a) it’s fun to grate, b) its scent evokes spicy memories of Christmastime and c) it’s excellent value for money – one or two nutmeg kernels can last you absolutely ages.
Hazelnuts are one of the few entries on this list that are botanically true nuts, but I fear Nutella has led us astray on this one. Hazelnuts are fine toasted, a little sweet and creamy, and it’s lovely that, unlike some of the other nuts, they’re grown in New Zealand. But while they’re OK with other things – sprinkled over a salad or concealed with lots of chocolate and oil and sugar – they lack the true greatness that characterises some of the other nuts on this list.
Almonds, like hazelnuts, are very good in the right context, like being smothered in wasabi and sugar. Almond flour is a good option to add to your baking if you’re sure it won’t encounter anyone with a nut allergy and you want to feel fancy, and almond milk is a mid-tier plant-based milk. But almonds on their own are just a bit too plain, and enjoying the almond butter your flatmates gave you for your birthday has to be tempered with the knowledge that most almonds are grown in California, where climate change and water shortages are threatening the future of the lucrative crop.
Macadamias have a slightly scaled-down version of the issue that Brazil nuts also suffer from: a single sphere is too big, a half is too small. In general, macadamias are just a little too smooth: even almonds have some pleasing subtle corrugation, but macadamias are just creamy. That means they’re well suited to being covered in chocolate, but can’t stand on their own like other nuts.
I have had pecan pie exactly once – I remember it being very nice but that might just have been the sugar and butter – and nibbling on a few pecans in the years since hasn’t left a particularly strong impression. But I asked bona fide American Liv Sisson, The Spinoff’s commercial editor, who describes the nut as “god tier”, to give me the pitch on why pecans are important:
You can disagree on pronunciation, but you can’t disagree with this: the pecan is the best nut. They are god tier. And they’re not some legume interloper, they are a real nut. Pecans are buttery and sweet with an ineffable mouth feel – crunchy then somehow immediately stuck in your teeth in a nice way is the best I can do. Cinnamon scrolls, pancakes, bougie muesli, fancy nut mix – all of these would fall over as culinary concepts without the pecan. Duck Island’s butter pecan ice cream is the best flavour by proxy but that’s another ranking. Pecans are homely, they have granny energy, but they’re also mysterious. They are mast fruiters and only fruit in some years, but always in sync as a group. How? Science is still unsure. I could write more about this but I won’t, because Robin Wall Kimmerer already wrote a perfect pecan essay: Council of the Pecans.
The only thing I have to add to this is that hearing Robin Wall Kimmerer pronounce pecan in the Braiding Sweetgrass audiobook really reveals what poetry the word’s two simple syllables contain. Pecans were essential to indigenous Cherokees’ survival after being forced to move by colonisers in the 19th century, which is now known as the Trail of Tears.
We’ve now reached the part of the list where every single one of the nuts that features is great, and each could make an argument for why they deserve to be at the top. Pine nuts are the smallest nut on this list, and their tidy size and teardrop shape are very appealing. Pesto is great, the creaminess is tempered by a slightly smoky, almost bitter quality that reminds you they come from pungent trees. I like how they can hide in food until you almost don’t notice them but their high price makes them something I only ever experience in small doses.
This is a bad time for me to be ranking cashews, which would normally be a top-three nut for me based purely on taste. The pros are: it is a foundation for extremely great vegan cheese, you can add a handful to saucy stir-fries or saffron and pea rice or kheer or your mouth, it looks very freaky when it grows. Cons: Thinking about the cashew fruit makes me feel extremely sad that I have never been able to try a cashew apple, there are a lot of labour issues in the cashew process (workers are exposed to acid from the shells when husking the nuts). These cons are also trumped by the fact that last week I ate way too many chilli and lime cashews from the supermarket and sadly concluded that the more they’re crusted in roast garlic extract, chilli powder, dextrose and sugar, the less appealing they are. I anticipate feeling quite disgusted by the concept of cashews for the next two weeks, at which point I will recover and return to previous rates of consumption.
Sorry to cashews, it came down to arbitrary factors at the end of the day, but at least this nut put its best foot forward.
Of all the nuts, walnuts have the most beautiful shape. They’re so wrinkly, and then their flaky skin means that biting into one is like biting into a pastry. If this ranking was based simply on “best taste when raw”, walnuts would be at the top of the list. If this ranking was based on “best taste when pickled”, walnuts would win as well, simply because I can’t imagine a perfect sandwich that doesn’t have pickled walnuts in it. However, this ranking is for all-around nut success, so taking into account all categories (versatility, looks, use in salads, size etc), walnuts can only come fourth. Walnuts are best enjoyed socially, in their shells: gather all your friends and family to poke holes in the unripe walnuts (if you are pickling them) or to crack open the shells and admire the art within. (Competition idea: with a minute each with a mortar and pestle, a hammer, bare hands and a nutcracker, race your friends and family to see who can crack the most nuts in four minutes. It’s the all-around award for nut-cracking!)
For starters: coconuts are not true nuts but neither are most of the other nuts on this list and they still meet the criteria to be counted.
Coconuts are right up there with walnuts in the “most delicious raw” category. Forget their injury rates and consider the coconut. What a nut! Delicious and useful at every stage of its life. Its husks can be made into charcoal; its oil is wonderful on toast and also can make your hair very shiny, its water is about as hydrating as a sports drink without all the sugar and plastic. While its astonishing versatility is amazing, I’m concerned that many people haven’t experienced coconut in its best form, plump and juicy out of the shell. The problem is the context: a coconut that just fell out of the tree is wonderful, but dried, desiccated coconut brings down the reputation of the fruit.
When I was 12 I decided that my favourite food was toast, not just because I liked toast (although I did really like toast and still do) but because I figured it made sense to have a favourite food that you got to eat every day. Choosing peanuts as the second-best nut is a bit like that: they are in so many kinds of food that you could eat The Spinoff’s second-best type of nut in every meal if you wanted. Peanut butter on toast is an excellent vegan breakfast, peanuts sprinkled over noodles for lunch (and maybe topped with peanut oil), roasted chilli peanuts as an afternoon snack, peanut sauce could accompany kung pao cauliflower for dinner.
I’ve had delicious boiled peanuts in South India still soft in their shells, stuffed peanutty handfuls of scroggin into my mouth in the New Zealand mountains, eaten peanut-filled pad thai from roadside stalls in Thailand and concluded that peanuts are perfect in a variety of contexts as well as foodstuffs. Also, while we’re here: crunchy peanut butter is the best kind.
Pistachios may seem like a left-field choice for Best Nut, but consider:
Pistachio shells are incredibly entertaining, providing an audio experience (and any number of pistachio-themed ASMR videos). The shells also lead to the optimal nut consumption experience: you are simply forced to eat them one at a time, making the experience more mindful, and also meaning you have to spend more time with each nut, contemplating its superiority (its high ranking might be the product of this sort of Stockholm Syndrome of nuts).
They don’t need to be ground into butter; they don’t need to be slathered in starchy chilli seasoning; they don’t need to be opened with a hammer, or used in cough syrup or mixed with chocolate to show their full potential. They shine when they are simply salted and roasted, the perfect match of form, colour, texture, size and flavour. It’s very obvious: pistachios are the best nut.
Spring is seen as a good time to reset your healthy habits.