Honey Roasted Spiced Nuts : LTU Butter

Do you like munching on fancy roasted spiced nuts? These nuts are delicious and very addictive. Not only that, they are terribly expensive too. But tell you what, you can make your own roasted nuts and chose the spicy flavors that you like.

First of all, buy raw nuts of your choice. I like cashew nuts, pecans, almonds and hazelnuts. I know, these nuts don't come cheap but it is still a lot cheaper to buy and then make your own spiced nuts.

Then roast the nuts. This is how I do it. For cashew, almonds and hazelnuts, I roast them in the oven at 180C for 12 minutes. I put them separately in the oven without preheating like this (taught by my auntie) :

The nuts go into a cold oven and stay in there while the oven is pre-heating.  This is my way. You can explore other ways of doing this.

If I am just eating them plain, at the end of 12 minutes I will leave them in the oven to roast further on residual heat for about 8-10 minutes. How to tell if they are done? When you take a fork or whatever implement you choose to stir the  raw nuts, you will find that they are dense and heavy. When they are properly roasted, you can feel that they are light and brittle. The final test is to eat a nut and you should be able to tell if they are done or not.

But for the purpose of making spiced roasted nuts, I take them out immediately because these nuts will spend another 20-25 minutes in the oven later.

For pecans and walnuts, I would roast them for 8 minutes because they cook faster that cashews, almonds and hazelnuts. If eating plain, I will leave them to roast further on residual heat for another 10 minutes. After the nuts are done, make the sugar or honey syrup :

Water, sugar or honey and butter.

Bring the syrup mixture to a boil and simmer for about 1 minute. After that, pour it into your mixing bowl and stir to mix with your choice of seasonings :

The syrup is mixed with salt, pepper, cumin and paprika. Stir, stir, stir.

After that, add your roasted nuts and mix to coat the nuts with the spiced syrup mixture :

Toss the roasted nuts in the syrup mixture.

Then spread the nuts in a single layer on a lined baking tray and bake at 160C for an initial 10 minutes. Stir and continue to roast and stir at intervals of 5 minutes until the syrup is caramelized and thick and the nuts are sticky. Remove the nuts from the oven to cool and store in an airtight container.

I had a bit of technical problem with this batch of nuts because I forgot to reduce the amount of water when making the syrup. The amount of nuts I used was less that the one here. This made the nuts very wet and it took quite long for the syrup to caramelize and dry up. My pecans became over-roasted and was slightly burnt. But they still tasted good to me because I liked the burnt taste hah..hah.... I couldn't stop eating the nuts the moment they came out of the oven. So beware when making these nuts. Share!

Honey Roasted Spiced Nuts

Recipe source : Adapted from Food Wishes

Ingredients :

- 1 cup roasted pecans

- 1 cup roasted almonds

- 1 cup roasted cashews

- 1 teaspoon salt (or to taste)

- 1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper

- 1 teaspoon cumin

- 1 teaspoon Hungarian Paprika

For the syrup :

- 2 tablespoons butter

- 1/4 cup honey

- 1/4 cup water (maybe less as I found it too wet for 3 cups of nuts)

Method :

1. Put the salt, ground pepper, cumin and Hungarian Paprika in a big mixing bowl.

2. In a saucepan put butter, honey and water.

3. Bring to a boil and cook for 1 minute.

4. Pour syrup into the mixing bowl and stir to mix with the seasoning.
5. Put the roasted nuts into the mixing bowl and stir to coat the nuts with the syrup.

6. Pour the nuts onto a lined baking tray (you can grease the tray using cooking spray or just rub with oil but I did not do this)

7. Roast at 160C (or 180C depending on your oven) for 10 minutes and mix the nuts thoroughly.

8. Roast for another 5 minutes and repeat mixing. Continue to roast until the syrup has caramelised and thickened. At this stage the nuts may be wet and sticky but will dry off once cooled.

6. Cool completely and serve or store in an airtight container.

Note : All together I roasted for a total of 20-25 minutes. You need to adjust accordingly.

This post is linked to the event, Little Thumbs Up organised by Zoe of Bake for Happy Kids and Doreen of My Little Favourite DIY and hosted by Jozelyn Ng of Spice Up My Kitchen.