Go nuts with pecans out of pies and brownies

Copyright © HT Digital Streams Limit all rights reserved. Nandita Iyer 4 min Read 16 Aug 2025, 04:00 Ist Pecan Apple Oat Muffins; (Right) hot maple -pecans. (Nandita Iyer) Summary The sweet buttiness of cashew and the earthly neubacy of walnut make pecans a versatile ingredient in snacks, salads, fried vegetables and much more. I took my first bite of a raw pecan and thought – that’s exactly what you would get as a cashew and a walnut had a baby. Pecan nuts take the best from both: the sweet butter of a cashures and the earthly nuts of a walnut. Until now, my encounters with pecans have been in pecans or a brownie, but it is a nut that achieves a perfect ten, even if it is raw and unnoticed. It also has an inherent, sharp texture that avoids one of the most annoying properties of most nuts when eaten raw – the tendency to get stuck between your teeth. Nuts were high on the shopping list of Indians for years visiting the US – and I’m clearly not alone to think that way. When I asked my Instagram audience what the top of their ‘must-buy’ list from the US (given that you can find almost everything here these days), pecans and walnuts emerged as clear favorites. And for good reason: the quality is excellent, and prices can be much more attractive than in India. I picked up a bag of two pounds of fresh pecan halves at Costco in the US for $ 12.99-about £ 1,200 per kilogram. A quick online check at home has shown that Indian retailers sell pecans for anywhere between £ 3,300-5,000 per kilo. Although almonds and cashews can sometimes be better value locally, pecans here are still something of a niche note. With nuts, freshness is important. Long import trips and months on store shelves can fade their scent and texture, which is why a bag cut by hand with a friend or family member will almost always trump everything you can order online. That said, if there is no journey on the horizon, a small package of a reliable local source can still be worth it, if only to enjoy the clear buttery sweetness that makes pecans so special. But are pecans truly ‘cheap’ in the US? Climate change and global exports mean that even the locally grown nuts are no longer very affordable. I read this interesting piece about how Pecan became too expensive for their own thanksgiving pecans. The historian James McWilliams tells in the Pecan: A History of America’s Native Nut (2013). It only tasted one at a Paris trading show in 2006 for a group of curious Chinese buyers to abandon a chain reaction. Within a few years, China has no word for ‘pecan nut’ to the import of a quarter of the US crop. They struggled, roasted and marketed as an antioxidant -laden luxury snack, and they went from unheard to available in local gas stations. Add to that the droughts in Texas, late ripen and the fact that bakers only price the freshest, most beautiful halves for pies, and you have the perfect recipe for expensive pecans. I have a little trend when it comes to exotic ingredients, saving them for a ‘special’ day or dish. I’m sure some of you read it. But after too many rounds of cleaning dilapidated treasures from the back of my freezer, I decided to use these pecans in the here and now. In addition to eating some raw to enjoy their taste and to roast a little, I used pecans in muffins-a perfect grab-and-go snack for kids. My kitchen notebook is full of ideas: Sunday banana nuts, quinoa salad with fried vegetables and pecans, pecan nuts and chilli-crust, homemade granola with dried fruit and coconut flakes and a chocolate bark with sea salt for a healthy treatment. At this rate, my two pound stash will disappear sooner than later. I will hope that a travel friend walks and gets me a bag. Hot maple pecans make 1 cup ingredients 1 cup pecan halves 1 tablespoon maple syrup (or honey) 1 teaspoon olive oil half teaspoon salt half teaspoon red chilli powder Preheat the aviation to 160 degrees Celsius method in a bowl, whisk the maple syrup, salt and cold powder. Add the pecans, toss well to cover. Put in the aviation basket with parchment, transfer the nuts and grill for 5-6 minutes, shaking once halfway. Look carefully while nuts can burn quickly. Serve as soon as cooled or store in an airtight container and use it to overcome salads and grain trays. Pekan Apple Oat Muffins Make 9 Ingredients Half-Binding Whole wheat flour 1 cup oatmeal 1 breeding cinnamon half teaspoon pepper half cup brown sugar 1.5 t game baking powder half cup milk half to three quarter cup milk 1 egg 4 tablespoon olive oil 2 tsppel apple cider coarped pecan methods with a reddish apple, maps charts Kabou Cloped Pecl Pecans 180 degrees Celsius. Feed a muffin tray with 9 heads with paper linings. In a large mixing bowl, whisk together the entire wheat flour, oatmeal, cinnamon, salt, brown sugar and baking powder. Beat the milk, egg, olive oil, apple cider vinegar, vanilla and grated apple in a separate bowl until well combined. Pour the wet ingredients into the dry mixture and stir gently until just combined. Do not mix. Fold in the chopped pecans. Divide the batter evenly between the muffin cups and fill each about three-fourths full. Bake for 15-20 minutes, or until a ship comes out clean in the middle. Refrigerate completely before storing in an airtight container in the fridge, where they will stay up to a week. Tip: You can make oatmeal by blendering rolled -up oats to a blender to fine soil. Double test is a bi -weekly column over vegetarian cuisine, which prepares a single ingredient in two ways. Nandita Iyer’s latest book is the Great Indian Thali. She posts @safftrail on Instagram and X. 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