What You Should Know About Soaking Nuts

Soaking nuts actually begins the sprouting process of the nuts and when any nut, bean, legume, etc…. is sprouting the nutritional profile immediately increases. Soaking nuts also has had the track record of improving the taste and digestibility of the nuts. 

If you think about how you should soak nuts it duplicates how the natives in Central America used to soaked their seeds and nuts. They would actually use sea water and the salt helps activate the good enzymes and deactivate the enzyme inhibitors.  It’s really that simple, just take some warm water and dissolve in the salt and our enough of this mixture onto your seeds and nuts until they are completely covered.

Soaking nuts makes them fresh and crisp, and it even typically improves the nut nutrition value.

The length of time you will leave your nuts soaking will depend on what nut you are soaking.  Even if you only have 20 minutes you are still able to reap the rewards of eating soaked nuts. You can be soaking them anywhere from 2 hours to 24 hours.  It is very important to remember to rinse your nuts through a strainer at least once every 24 hours keeping the water fresh. 

Eating the Eatnuts.com Nuts freshly soaked are truly a delicious treat and one of my favorite ways to eat them. I will throw them into salads, eat them raw, or even make power energy bars with them. However, the downside is that they are not going to last very long and you can take the risk of the nuts getting moldy.

If you aren’t going to eat the nuts within a day or two you should dehydrate them immediately after soaking nuts and seeds. You can do this a couple different ways. If you have a dehydrator you can just put the almonds in, set your temperature and watch your time as you go about the rest of your day. If you don’t have a dehydrator you can still dehydrate the nuts with your ordinary everyday oven. In a stainless steel pan you will place the almonds into the oven at about 150 degrees, turning them occasionally until they are dry and crisp.

Below you will find details for variety of different nuts. Sally Fallon wrote a fabulous book called Nourishing Traditions that is full of fabulous information on this subject matter. The information below was taken from the book.

Almonds

• 4 cups Eatnuts.com Almonds
• 1 tbsp unrefined sea salt
• filtered water (enough to cover nuts)

Soak overnight or a minimum of 7 hours
Dehydrate for 12-24 hours or until crisp

Macadamia Nuts

• 4 cups Eatnuts.com Raw Macadamia Nuts
• 1 tbsp unrefined sea salt
• filtered water (enough to cover nuts)

Soak overnight or a minimum of 7 hours
Dehydrate for 12-24 hours or until crisp (do not use temperature above 150°F)

Cashews
    •    4 cups Eatnuts.com Raw Cashews
    •    1 tbsp  unrefined sea salt
    •    filtered water (enough to cover nuts)

Soak overnight or a minimum of 7 hours
Dehydrate for 12-24 hours or until crisp (do not use temperature above 150°F)
Careful as these can get a little slimy and you may need to increase them temperature to 200-250 degrees.

Pecans & Walnuts
    •    4 cups Eatnuts.com Raw Pecans or Eatnuts.com Walnuts  
    •    2 tsp unrefined sea salt
    •    filtered water (enough to cover nuts)
Soak overnight or a minimum of 7 hours
Dehydrate for 12-24 hours or until crisp (do not use temperature above 150°F)

Pine Nuts & Hazelnuts

• 4 cups Eatnuts.com Pine Nuts or Eatnuts.com Hazelnuts
• 1 tbsp unrefined sea salt
• filtered water (enough to cover nuts)

Soak overnight or a minimum of 7 hours
Dehydrate for 12-24 hours or until crisp (do not use temperature above 150°F)

Pumpkin seeds

• 4 cups Eatnuts.com Pumpkin Seeds
• 2 tbsp unrefined sea salt
• filtered water (enough to cover pumpkin seeds)

Soak overnight or a minimum of 7 hours
Dehydrate for 12 hours or overnight  (do not use temperature above 150°F)

Nourishing Traditions, 2nd edition, pg 452-453, 512, 513-517