Brazil Nuts Are Brought to You by Rodents | Hacker News Reader

Brazil Nuts Are Brought to You by Rodents

atlasobscura.com

59 pointsextarial27 comments

>crescent-shaped, creamy seeds

Are they really creamy? Just eaten one. It's relatively hard and fractures into shards when chewed, as you continue chewing the shards get smaller and smaller and finally approaches texture of a chewed walnut, maybe bit stiffer.

They must have mistaken it for cashews.

They are if you get them fresh. They are almost like coconut meat.

Dried nuts ship and store better. You can soak or steam most dried nuts and legumes for a fresher consistency or shorter cooking times.

Where I'm from, fresh Pecans are sweet, pliant, and heavy- pretty typical mammoth halves. The products from the store are not very similar, but that's the cost of keeping them from going rancid on the shelves.

I also soak almonds before pulverizing for a number of un-cooked/toasted Indian dishes. Dried, they're mealy and not very aromatic. Soaked, they're a lot smoother.

How long do they need to soak?

I usually soak them overnight. I will soak then around 10-11 PM and by morning they are soft and tastes a lot better.

Do you toss the water out or does it have any benefit?

The water doesn't have much if any nutritional benefit, but if you like the flavor, you can add it to other things.

Depending, it may be good in smoothies or to steep tea in, to add to rice, oats, or quinoa, or as part of the stock liquid when cooking.

Soaking them, I have been told, also removes some of the less healthy elements within them.

Selling unsoaked nuts is IMO comparable to selling dry rice. I feel food packaging should do more to inform you.

> They only bear fruit in nearly pristine, undisturbed forest

.. and various backyards or just along the road even in larger cities. Some consider them a nuisance[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_nut#Hazards

From the section just below in that wiki article

"Brazil nut trees produce fruit almost exclusively in pristine forests, as disturbed forests lack the large-bodied bees of the genera..."

What do Brazilians call Brazil Nuts?

Something that locally we call "Castanha do Pará"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brazil_nut#/media/File:Brazil_...

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bertholletia_excelsa

Interesting. That seems to explain why we call these 'paranoot' in Dutch.

We call it nuts from one of the biggest, country-in-a-state administrative regions, the second biggest I guess in amazon rainforest, after the absolutely humongous state called Amazonas (AM). Sometimes here it's also the one implied if you just say "nut" (castanha), though cashew nuts are also common and plentiful but come out more from northeastern regions, the ones with a beautiful coast and equatorial climate, than the northern directly associated with humid continental Amazon geography.

Here we call it Pará Nuts, or castanha do pará. Pará is the most famous state were the nuts grow.

In German, they're "Paranüsse", where "nüsse" = nuts.

Just to join the choir, in Swedish they're para nuts as well.

> They only bear fruit in nearly pristine, undisturbed forest

Does this mean we can use the Brazil Nut (and its availability/price) as a "canary" for forest condition?

Fruit bats fertilise some plants in Oceania. I wonder if we have a lot more '...brought to you by mammals' fruits to come? (I think they fertilise non-farmed species. they eat the heart out of the fruit industry and are endangered in part because they're seen as a pest)

"Discover the insects that do most farming in the world, n°5 (bees) will surprise you!"

If bees are mammalian, I will be surprised.

I worked for a while in the Peruvian rainforest and was told that the biggest single cause of death was a brazil nut falling on your bonce.

Curse them.

Yeah they can keep them. Worst nut.

As seen in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, I suppose.

I like real organic peanut butter.

Who's Hazel anyway

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