A little information about Pine Nuts today as I had just posted a recipe that included Pine Nuts. I never realized how good they tasted with veggies until I had them for the first time. They are great with salads also. They add a nice crunch as well as serve as a lovely garnish to many recipes.
Also called Indian nut, piñon, pignoli and pignolia this high-fat nut comes from several varieties of pine trees. The nuts are actually inside the pine cone, which generally must be heated to facilitate their removal. This labor-intensive process is what makes these nuts so expensive. Pine nuts grow in China, Italy, Mexico, North Africa and the southwestern United States. There are two main varieties. Both have a thin shell with an ivory-colored nutmeat that averages about 1/2 inch in length. The Mediterranean or Italian pine nut is from the stone pine. It's torpedo-shaped, has a light, delicate flavor and is the more expensive of the two. The stronger-flavored Chinese pine nut is shaped like a squat triangle. Its pungent pine flavor can easily overpower some foods. Pine nuts can be found in bulk in nut shops and health-food stores, and packaged in many supermarkets. The Chinese variety will more likely be available in Asian markets. Because of their high fat content, pine nuts turn rancid quickly. They should be stored airtight in the refrigerator for up to 3 months, frozen for up to 9 months. Pine nuts can be used in a variety of sweet and savory dishes and are well known for their flavorful addition to the classic Italian pesto.
Pine Nuts: Wikipedia
Pine nuts are the edible
seeds of
pines (family
Pinaceae, genus Pinus). About 20 species of pine produce seeds large enough to be worth harvesting; in other pines the seeds are also edible, but are too small to be of value as a human food.
[1][2][3]In
Europe, pine nuts come from the
Stone Pine (Pinus pinea), which has been cultivated for its nuts for over 6,000 years, and harvested from wild trees for far longer. The
Swiss Pine (Pinus cembra) is also used to a very small extent.
In
Asia, two species are widely harvested,
Korean Pine (Pinus koraiensis) in northeast Asia (the most important species in international trade), and
Chilgoza Pine (Pinus gerardiana) in the western
Himalaya. Four other species,
Siberian Pine (Pinus sibirica),
Siberian Dwarf Pine (Pinus pumila),
Chinese White Pine (Pinus armandii) and
Lacebark Pine (Pinus bungeana), are also used to a lesser extent.
In
North America, the main species are three of the
pinyon pines,
Colorado Pinyon (Pinus edulis),
Single-leaf Pinyon (Pinus monophylla), and
Mexican Pinyon (Pinus cembroides). The other eight pinyon species are used to a small extent, as are
Gray Pine (Pinus sabineana),
Torrey Pine (Pinus torreyana) and
Sugar Pine (Pinus lambertiana). In the
United States, pine nuts are mainly harvested by
Native American tribes; in many areas, they have exclusive rights to the harvest.
Pine nuts contain (depending on species) between 10–34% of
protein, with Stone Pine having the highest content.
[2] They are also a source of
dietary fibre. When first extracted from the pine
cone, they are covered with a hard shell (seed coat), thin in some species, thick in others. The nutrition is stored in the large female
gametophytic tissue that supports the developing embryo (
sporophyte) in the centre. Although a
nut in the culinary sense, in the
botanical sense pine nuts are seeds; being a
gymnosperm, they lack a
carpel (fruit) outside.
The shell must be removed before the pine nut can be eaten. Unshelled pine nuts have a long shelf life if kept dry and refrigerated (at –5 to +2 °C); shelled nuts (and unshelled nuts in warm conditions) deteriorate rapidly, becoming
rancid within a few weeks or even days in warm humid conditions. Pine nuts are commercially available in shelled form, but due to poor storage, these rarely have a good flavour and may be already rancid at the time of purchase.
Pine nuts have been eaten in Europe and Asia since the
Paleolithic period. They are frequently added to
meat,
fish, and
vegetable dishes. In
Italian they are called pinoli or (rarely) pignoli (locally also pinoccoli or pinocchi;
Pinocchio means 'pine nut') and are an essential component of Italian
pesto sauce. The pignoli cookie, an Italian specialty confection, is made of
almond flour formed into a dough similar to that of a
macaroon and then topped with pine nuts. Pine nuts are also featured in the salade landaise of
southwestern France. Pine nut coffee, known as piñón (
Spanish for pine nut), is a specialty found in the southwest United States, especially
New Mexico; it is typically a dark roast coffee and has a deep, nutty flavour. Pine nuts are also used in
chocolates and desserts such as
baklava.
Korean Pine pine nuts - unshelled, and shell, above; shelled, below
In the United States, millions of hectares of productive pinyon pine woods have been destroyed due to conversion to
grazing lands, and in China, destructive harvesting techniques (such as breaking off whole branches to harvest the cones) and the removal of trees for
timber have led to losses in production capacity.
