Roasted Pecans

Welcome new readers! If you’re visiting this blog for the first time, either because of the mention in Vegetarian Times or because of the Food Blog Awards, you may be wondering, “What’s a blog about ‘fat-free’ cooking doing with a post about pecans, which are almost all fat?” The truth is that the recipes on this blog are not really fat-free; what they are free of, for the most part, is refined oils (olive oil, canola oil, etc.), margarine (and butter, of course), shortening, and other “man-made,” processed fats. Around the holidays I sometimes make exceptions to this rule, but even then I try to reduce the fat whenever possible. I try to keep the fat below 15% of the total calories in the dish, and when I exceed that, I label the recipe “higher-fat” (the labels appear at the end of the post). I’ve never featured a recipe that’s almost 100% fat–until now.

A long time ago, a friend’s mother told me how she made the delicious roasted pecans she’d served at a party: You melt butter in a skillet, add the pecans, sauté them until they’re fragrant, and sprinkle them with salt before cooling. For years that’s how I made them, using high-quality margarine instead of butter. It’s a treat so irresistible that it’s possible for me to consume huge amounts of fat just by nibbling as I cook (each ounce contains over 21 grams of fat). This year I wanted to give roasted pecans as Christmas presents, and I got to thinking that there must be a way to roast them without the margarine and have them taste just as good.

I started doing some research, and I found a little-known trick to making pecans taste sweeter: Soaking and rinsing the shelled nuts in lukewarm water before roasting removes the tannins and pieces of corky material that can cause pecans to taste bitter. I was intrigued and decided to give it a try. The results were amazing! The pecans not only taste sweeter, but they seem to retain their moistness better during roasting, resulting in plumper roasted nuts.

While experimenting, I tried this technique two ways. One batch I roasted without added fat; to the other I added some margarine right at the end. Though the batch with the margarine did taste a little richer, mainly it tasted saltier because the margarine helps the salt adhere better. Both batches were delicious, and I doubt that most people would notice the missing margarine. I’m including the instructions for both methods, so you can do your own testing at home.