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Are all "Ground Walnuts" equally fresh and tasty?



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Mevater




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 9:09 am
I got a brand this year (top hechsher) that was on sale here in Brooklyn, and Im thinking it might have a bit of an aftertaste in the baked goods.

Do any of you only buy one brand only, or whatever is a good price?
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granolamom




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 6:05 pm
I often find the KLP nuts to be old and rancid. I have found this across all of the heimish brands, not always, but sometimes. I heard that trader joes walnuts are ok for pesach, I plan to double check that and grind my own this year.
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Rubber Ducky




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 6:11 pm
I was in Trader Joe's today and looked for raw walnuts but there were none. Many batches of Trader Joes walnuts have been recalled due to possible salmonella contamination: http://www.traderjoes.com/anno.....lnuts
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OOTBubby




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 8:27 pm
I haven't had great results with KLP ground walnuts. They generally seem to have an off taste. I found that ground almonds and ground hazelnuts taste much better.
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Mevater




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 9:58 pm
Oh boy, Ive baked lots of cookies w packages of ground walnuts (Liebers). Im not about to travel out of my neighborhood to buy ground walnuts.

~~~~~~~~~~

Finding out that the nuts you have in the pantry have gone stale is disappointing, especially if you found out right as you were mixing up your favorite quick bread, or worse, if you found out by biting into a rancid-tasting cookie that you just baked. Unless you regularly use nuts, chances are they will sit in the pantry for a long time before you decide to use them. The idea of throwing out an entire bag of food is unthinkable to some. However, you're better off discarding the stale nuts because the end result in baking can end up not worth eating.

Oil Content
Nuts are fatty and oily. While the oils make the nuts satisfying and tasty, they also make the nuts spoil rapidly. Poor storage conditions or unavoidable environmental factors like heat only speed up how fast the oils fail.

Bad Taste
Despite folk wisdom about reheating stale nuts to make them taste a little better, don't use stale nuts in baking. They can make otherwise sweet cookies and cakes taste bitter and rancid, and trying to revive the nuts' flavor is no guarantee that, as you store the baked goods, the nuts won't return to their original stale state. Baking will cook the nuts, not place them in suspended animation. The website Ochef notes, in response to a plea from a new pastry chef about stale-tasting cookies made with fresh ingredients, that it might be possible for nuts to seem fresh before baking, but that maybe "they're already on the border," and the heat of baking is causing them to quickly turn bad. If you even suspect the nuts might be too old, you might want to get a fresh pack of nuts.

Molds
Another potential problem is mold. An obviously moldy nut isn't going to end up in your baking, but if you store them for a long time or buy already-old nuts that have mold spores in them, you risk letting the mold grow even more. If someone allergic to mold handles the nuts or eats food in which the mold survived, they could experience an allergic reaction or get sick.

Storage and Testing
Store nuts in the freezer if you don't plan to use them soon, or in the refrigerator if you plan to use them within before six months go by. Keep them in sealed containers or zippered plastic bags. The University of Missouri Extension says you can keep shelled nuts at room temperature, if you keep them cool and dry, for up to four months. Use any shelled nuts that you store at room temperature within a week or so. Once you are ready to use the nuts, taste them before you throw them into a bowl of batter. Unless you picked them yourself fresh off the tree, you really don't know how old they are, and you want to ensure they haven't gone bad in the meantime.

http://www.livestrong.com/arti.....nuts/
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LovetoLive




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 10:20 pm
I bought paskez walnuts last year and did not like the taste.
This year I bought gefen. It looked much fresher (I could see moist oilyness on the nuts and the color was richer) so we'll see when I open it.
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MagentaYenta




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 10:42 pm
Remember at best any walnuts you purchase this time of year will have been harvested last autumn. None are really fresh, big co-ops like Diamond, have the facilities to keep their walnuts refrigerated. Small specialty packers, not so much.

Although walnut meal or ground walnuts unless refrigerated have a greater chance to go rancid due to the increased surface area. Large packers as noted previously do have facilities to keep their ground meal refrigerated.
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Mevater




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 10:50 pm
MagentaYenta wrote:
Remember at best any walnuts you purchase this time of year will have been harvested last autumn. None are really fresh, big co-ops like Diamond, have the facilities to keep their walnuts refrigerated. Small specialty packers, not so much.

Although walnut meal or ground walnuts unless refrigerated have a greater chance to go rancid due to the increased surface area. Large packers as noted previously do have facilities to keep their ground meal refrigerated.


Easily remedied by proper packaging. The chestnuts that you get in the bag for about a diollar, are vacuum packed I think. Why arent the ground nuts? Whats the point of selling old unhealthy ground nuts?
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greenfire




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 10:56 pm
almonds taste better but that's because I do not like walnuts
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MagentaYenta




 
 
    
 

Post Mon, Mar 30 2015, 11:04 pm
Mevater wrote:
Easily remedied by proper packaging. The chestnuts that you get in the bag for about a diollar, are vacuum packed I think. Why arent the ground nuts? Whats the point of selling old unhealthy ground nuts?


I pick my own black and English walnuts and process them myself, along with hazelnuts. These types of nuts all need to be dried before shelling. Commercial nuts are batch dried to a uniform moisture content. Far drier than what people do with home harvested nuts. When I grind my nuts I package them in a sealed plastic bag (I have a commercial vacuum sealer). Sometimes commercially sold nuts are treated with nitrogen before packaging and until the package is opened have a lower chance of going rancid (no oxygen). And sometimes nuts are gassed in the warehouses prior to processing just like apples and other fruits. It's a combination of processing, storage and packaging.

There is a huge taste and texture difference between commercially packaged nuts and home harvested and processed nuts.
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Raisin




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 31 2015, 5:23 am
I hardly use walnuts except for the charoses. Most of my baking is with almonds. Don't love ground hazelnuts, but they are nice whole for snacking.

My parents shell and grind their own but life is too short.
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myself




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 31 2015, 5:42 am
OOTBubby wrote:
I haven't had great results with KLP ground walnuts. They generally seem to have an off taste. I found that ground almonds and ground hazelnuts taste much better.


This.
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imasoftov




 
 
    
 

Post Tue, Mar 31 2015, 4:43 pm
I buy whole nuts (no shells) and grind them because they're fresher that way, all year round.
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Mevater




 
 
    
 

Post Sat, Apr 11 2015, 10:46 pm
Has anyone found ground nuts this Pesach with a good Hechsher that were fresh tasting?

My "off" ground walnuts killed close to a hundred cookies. Exploding anger
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