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Salted Almonds
1 pint water 1/2 cup salt 1 cup almonds 2 teaspoons butter or oil Blanch the almonds. Heat the salt and water, and when boiling add the nuts. Cook eight minutes. Drain, place them in a baking pan, and put the butter or oil over them with a brush. Bake until a delicate brown. Stir frequently.
A brine-then-bake method rather than the more familiar fry, which seasons the nut through instead of only coating it. The original gives no oven temperature and no clue to doneness beyond color, so the two things worth controlling are heat and drying.
- Oven temperatureSet the oven to 325-350F. Higher than that and the outsides brown before the interiors dry, leaving a leathery nut; the recipe's "delicate brown" takes roughly 12-20 minutes at 350F with stirring every 5 minutes.
- Dry them thoroughlyAfter the eight-minute boil the almonds are waterlogged. Drain and blot them well on a towel before brushing with butter or oil, or the fat slides off and the nuts steam rather than toast.
- The salt is a brine, not a coatingA half cup of salt to a pint of water is a saturated-ish brine that seasons the almonds as they cook; nearly all of it goes down the drain. The finished nuts are seasoned but not crusted, so taste one before adding more salt at the end.
- BlanchingCover the almonds with boiling water for about a minute, then drain and pinch the skins off. Do this before the brine step, not after.
- Stir frequently means itAlmonds go from delicate brown to scorched in under two minutes, and they continue to darken on the hot pan after they leave the oven. Pull them a shade lighter than you want and turn them out onto a cool plate.
- Fat quantityTwo teaspoons for a cup of nuts is a thin film, which is the point of the method. Use a brush or toss in a bowl; pouring it over will coat a few nuts heavily and leave the rest bare.
- Yield and keepingAbout one cup, enough for four to six as a nibble. Cool completely before storing, or trapped steam softens them; airtight at room temperature they hold a week or so.
Salted almonds were a fixture of formal dining in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, set out in small dishes or at each place along with olives and celery, to be taken through the meal rather than only before it. In the vegetarian cookery of the period, nuts carried much of the burden that meat carried elsewhere, and almonds in particular turn up ground into loaves, milked for sauces, and salted for the table. The brining method here is one of two common approaches, the alternative being to fry blanched almonds in butter or oil and salt them hot; boiling in brine first seasons the nut itself, which is why the finished almonds taste salty without a visible crust.