Soaking and dehydrating nuts requires extensive care, time and effort to get the best out of the nuts.
Why We Dehydrate Our Nuts
Below though is not a scientific explanation for this process, it is a summary of the effect of what happens :
Macadamia nuts contain enzyme inhibitors. God made them this way. Enzymes are unstable and therefore, He locked them up in the nuts until such time as they are needed. The time they are needed is at germination and forward into the growth of the new plant. So that’s what you mimic in your kitchen through soaking – a germination. The water tells the nuts that it is the time to soften up and get ready to grow, and voila! The enzyme inhibitors go away and the enzymes are now available for our use.
Dehydrating the nuts is optional. If the nuts are dehydrated, they will be raw and rich with enzymes – as long as the dehydrator is kept below 115°F – and the nuts will be returned to the crispy state that so many recipes require. Not to mention that they taste and feel great when they’re crunchy.
According to Dr. Edward Howell in Enzyme Nutrition, raw, germinated nuts are an excellent source of digestive enzymes. Most people do not consume enough digestive enzymes. This means their bodies must produce these enzymes, but the human body cannot supply a limitless supply of any kind of enzymes. The more digestive enzymes we have to make, the less metabolic enzymes we can make. The metabolic enzymes run all the systems of our bodies. So you can see that if our bodies manufactures digestive enzymes (which we could get from food) instead of metabolic enzymes, we would lack the necessary metabolic enzymes to keep our bodies functioning well. Dr. Howell claims that this is one of the reasons we tend toward modern diseases.
Process We Soak and Dehydrate Our Nuts
- Put 4 cups of any raw nuts in a half gallon mason jar.
- Add 1 tablespoon of sea salt.
- Fill with water to the top of the jar.
- Swirl the water around to dissolve the salt. (Salt is for taste and has no effect on whether the enzymes become available or not)
- Let the nuts sit in the jar sit overnight, at least 7 hours.
- Drain and rinse the nuts.
- Spread the nuts in a single layer on a dehydrator tray.
- Dry at 95 to 100°F until crispy. This usually takes about 24 hours, depending on dehydrator and other conditions, etc.
- Check by taste – to ensure they are crunchy and free of moisture.
We do NOT use an oven because it will kill the enzymes present in the nuts.
Is a Dehydrator Really Necessary?
Yes, it is being able to dehydrate them returns them to the crispy state that is called for in most recipes. It is essential to have our nuts crispy while keeping the enzyme benefits of raw, germinated nuts.
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