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Walnuts

Raw shelled walnuts are so expensive but I seriously want to make that spicy walnut taco recipe. If I buy walnuts in the shell at any old grocery store (and just crack them open myself at home), will those walnuts be raw?

Alternatively, I saw that some people successfully made the recipe with pumpkin seeds—do you use the same amount?

Comments

  • CarmentinaCarmentina Raw Newbie

    I always buy walnuts in the shell. I just crack them over conversation or while watching TV. It doesn’t take long at all once you get used to it. I would think pumpkin seeds might be stronger, so maybe less than the walnut amount. Where I live you can’t buy them raw, so I use the ones I get from pumpkins.

  • Thanks so much! I will just buy them in the shell. I’m so excited!!

  • I almost bought a bag of walnuts that were still in the shell the other day at the grocery store..until I read they had been washed in bleach, I think! Would they still be considered raw?

  • That’s horrible! Even if those are raw, I wouldn’t eat them. Good to know! I will look carefully:)

  • TomsMomTomsMom Raw Newbie

    Yes, dnacol, they are raw. Many kinds of nuts are now washed in cold bleach water to kill bacteria on teh shell. For exampel, almost all pecans are either bleached or heated with steam. The ones exposed to hot steam are not raw, no matter what the bag says.

    I can’t afford the horrendous price for so-call true raw organic nuts so I get the ones bleached.(I also don’t trust most of the stores that claim raw nuts)

    The bleach water does not penetrate the shell to the nut meat.

  • Kellygoneraw. I used sunflower seeds for that spicy taco meat recipe. It tasted awesome!

  • Alix,

    gosh, I never knew that some walnuts have been bleached! what other nuts are bleached?

  • TomsMomTomsMom Raw Newbie

    Honeygal, I didn’t know about the walnut shells until dnacol mentioned it, however, I know about pecans because I read it in the pecan association’s list of industry standards. Then I started to write to every pecans company I saw and found out who bleached and who used steam heat. Other nuts have are routinely heated to clean the shells, too. I think brazil nuts and macadamias and others. More companies are going to bleach water because steam is expensive, though. That will keep the nut meat raw. I don’t like it, but it’s better than a cooked nut. The hot steam does cook the oils and nut meat. You even need to ask raw stores how they are sure their nuts are raw because I’m finding some that do nothing to make sure their nuts are truly raw.

    I’ll try to find some sort of page that tells what the industry standards are for different nuts.

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