**Quickly, before I begin this post…I just found out that the senior midwife who delivered both our boys, Abby, has died tonight, Nov. 30. She went peacefully, in her sleep — she was in her 60s. We are in shock, she was happy and fine only on Thanksgiving! Please say a prayer for her family.**
Nuts are an excellent food — high in protein and fat and a lot of key nutrients, including magnesium (which many people are lacking in). However, they’re also high in phytic acid, an anti-nutrient which binds a lot 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 which aren’t properly prepared. Even Jacob, who has no allergies, seems to react if I consume 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!
Ingredients:
- Nuts of your choice, raw
- 1 tbsp. sea salt per lb. of nuts
- Water to cover
Directions:
Gather your supplies.
Pour the nuts into a glass bowl.
Add the salt to the bowl.
Fill it up with water, enough to cover the nuts. They’ll absorb a decent amount of water so make sure you add enough (you can add more later if needed).
The next day it will be ready to drain, 18 hours or so later. (There is one exception — cashews. They shouldn’t be soaked longer than 7 hours.) Pour the water off. Rinse the nuts a couple of times. 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 170). It won’t preserve the rawness of the nuts, but it works.
Put the tray into your dehydrator (if you have one).
Dry at 115 degrees (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!
Do you eat crispy nuts?
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TESTING!
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?