Written by Kate Tietje and updated by Sarena-Rae Santos in November of 2023.
Nuts are an excellent food — high in protein, fat, and many key nutrients, including magnesium (which many people lack). However, they’re also high in phytic acid, an anti-nutrient that binds key nutrients and makes them hard to digest. It also means the nutrients aren’t available to your body.
Soaking the nuts in salt water and drying them reduces the phytic acid and makes them much more digestible. While the science behind both processing nuts and grains this way is somewhat controversial, I have noted that my family struggles with nuts and grains that aren’t properly prepared. Even when I breastfed my allergy-free son, Jacob, he seemed to react if I consumed improperly prepared nuts or grains — but not properly prepared. That says something to me, anecdotal or not.
Luckily, it’s a simple process to make nuts safe to eat!
How to Make Crispy Nuts
Ingredients:
- Nuts of your choice, raw
- 1 tbsp. sea salt per lb. of nuts
- Water to cover
Directions:
Step 1: Pour the nuts into a glass bowl.
Step 2: Add the salt to the bowl.
Step 3: Fill it with enough water to cover the nuts. They’ll absorb a decent amount of water, so ensure you add enough (you can add more later if needed).
Step 4: Allow this to sit overnight, or about 12 – 18 hours. (There is one exception — cashews. They shouldn’t be soaked longer than 7 hours.)
Step 5: The next day, pour the water off and rinse the nuts several times until the water is clear.
Step 6: Then spread them on a dehydrator tray. If you don’t have a dehydrator, you can spread the nuts on a tray and put them in your oven as low as it goes (mine goes to 170ºF). It won’t preserve the rawness of the nuts, but it works.
Step 7: Put the tray into your dehydrator (if you have one). Dry at 115ºF (which will preserve the rawness) for several hours until crisp. It will only take 2 – 3 hours in an oven; it may take 12 or more in a dehydrator.
That’s it! Now, your nuts are prepared and digestible. You can eat them plain, bake with them, make granola, whatever you like!
How to Make Crispy Nuts
Ingredients
- Nuts of your choice raw
- 1 tbsp. sea salt per lb. of nuts
- Water to cover
Instructions
- our the nuts into a glass bowl.
- Add the salt to the bowl.
- Fill it with enough water to cover the nuts. They'll absorb a decent amount of water, so ensure you add enough (you can add more later if needed).
- Allow this to sit overnight, or about 12 - 18 hours. (There is one exception -- cashews. They shouldn't be soaked longer than 7 hours.)
- The next day, pour the water off and rinse the nuts several times until the water is clear.
- Then spread them on a dehydrator tray. If you don't have a dehydrator, you can spread the nuts on a tray and put them in your oven as low as it goes (mine goes to 170ºF). It won't preserve the rawness of the nuts, but it works.
- Put the tray into your dehydrator (if you have one). Dry at 115ºF (which will preserve the rawness) for several hours until crisp. It will only take 2 - 3 hours in an oven; it may take 12 or more in a dehydrator.
Thank you for posting this. It was just enough to make me finally try it, and blog about it, yesterday – much easier than I was imagining it would be.
What is controversial about soaking nuts and grains?