Pine nuts: application, benefits, cooking recipes

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Perhaps, it is difficult to find a person who has never seen a pine nut. These small, hidden under a dense dark brown shell, the fruits of the Siberian cedar are sources of a mass of biologically active substances: various vitamins, microelements, as well as valuable oil.

The benefits of pine nuts have been known since very ancient times. Even Avicenna mentioned the most beneficial properties of this fruit in his writings on medicine. Eating pine nuts is useful for both children and adults, as they provide the body with many vitamins and minerals, and also help strengthen the immune system.

However, for many of us, a pine nut is, first of all, a yummy associated with childhood. True, to get to the very pulp of the nut, you need to work a little, because they have a rather dense and strong shell, which makes up almost half of the entire mass. According to experts, the easiest way to extract a nut is by dousing its shell with boiling water. Although many of us probably chewed it with our teeth or crushed it with a garlic press.

Of course, there are already shelled pine nuts on sale, with which you won't have to mess around for a long time. But pine nut oil is very unstable and quickly perishable, so peeled nuts quickly become rancid and can be dangerous to human he alth. In this regard, it is not recommended to buy such a product. It’s better to spend a little time and energy fighting the shell and enjoy truly he althy and he althy nuts.

In Soviet times, pine nuts were considered mainly a remedy, but in recent years it has become widely used in cooking. After all, this is a delicious delicacy, especially if the nuts are a little sautéed in a pan. There are a wide variety of recipes with pine nuts: they are added to salads, and to vegetable, meat and fish dishes. However, perhaps the most famous dish using this ingredient is the Italian pesto sauce. True, in Italy itself, instead of pine nuts, they use the fruits of pine pine - the closest relative of the Siberian cedar. We bring to your attention a couple of recipes that use pine nuts.

Cheese snack with nuts

As ingredients, we need 250 grams of Roquefort cheese, 200 grams of already peeled pine nuts and 50 grams of butter. Cheese must be mashed in a porcelain mortar, then add oil to it and grind until a homogeneous mass is formed. Divide the nuts into two parts: add the first tothe resulting cheese mass, mix and roll into small balls, which we roll in the remaining nut mass and put on a dish.

Pesto sauce with pine nuts

To prepare the dish, we need the following ingredients: Parmesan cheese - 50 grams, basil - 50 grams, olive oil - 100 ml, a couple of garlic cloves, three tablespoons of peeled pine nuts, s alt.

Chop the garlic and cheese finely and put all the ingredients in a blender. Beat until a homogeneous mass is formed. Delicious sauce is ready! However, be careful when adding s alt, as parmesan itself is quite s alty.