I bought a large amount of almonds at a bargain price. While moving the almonds to jars, I spotted a white powder which was very reminiscent of the eggs of the pantry moth. In the past, such powder quickly became larvae that turned into moths.
I don't want to throw away all the almonds. Is there any way to clean them?
My personal choice would be to throw this away just because I'm too squeamish.
But people here use salty water to get rid of larvae from wild mushrooms. The idea is to soak the unprocessed mushrooms containing living insects, which will try to escape and eventually die outside the mushroom. You then rinse couple of times with fresh water and dry it to avoid mould development.
I've found this is used as a laboratory test here with fruit. They use 1/4 cup salt in 4 cups water, but they mash the fruit with a potato masher.
If you are already seeing larvae dust, the nuts are already nibbled by the larvae, you cannot undo that :( but if you don't mind sharing your food with them, or chomping on the occasional worm, you could try killing them.
I've heard of people using deep freeze. It should kill at least all larvae. The eggs are probably somewhat hardier, but as far as I know, the usual setting of a standard domestic freezer (** or ***) should be enough for killing the eggs too. It can lead to drying out of the nuts, and I don't know if and how you can remove the dead larvae, but soaking them in water would be a good thing to try, as I've frequently seen dead worms float to the top in compotes.
Another thing to try would be high heat instead of low heat. Cooking the nuts through would change them (and their shelf life) a lot, but maybe steaming can work. I don't know how long it has to be before it really kills them though.
In any case, I strongly suggest 1) keeping the suspicious nuts in a completely tight container (I've had worms getting into some standard tupperware containers and similar) and 2) putting up pheromone traps in the pantry, to prevent contamination of further foods.
When Weevils are spotted in my almonds, cashews or peanuts,I empty the content on a tray, place these in the sun, and stir with a fork. Then I place the content in a sieve, and rinse it thoroughly, stirring it with hand.Then place the rinsed content on tray and allow to dry in the sun;when completely dry, if raw, roast in oven/microwave for which find info on Google.
I have heard from several people etc that freezing food for 3 days will kill any eggs or bugs on it and prevent it from developing into anything.
