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I have made this caramelized nuts recipe (here, it's in french), which contains olive oil.

The taste is good, but since it's something you eat with your fingers, they get all greasy quite fast.

  • Why is the recipe suggesting to use oil?
  • Could I do without using it or it would break some kind of chemistry or something?

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups of cashew
  • 1/2 cup of honey
  • 2 table spoons sriracha sauce
  • 2 table spoons of olive oil
  • 1 table spoon of ginger

Preparation:

  1. Pre-heat the oven (350ºF)
  2. Mix everything but the nuts together
  3. Pour sauce over the nuts, and mix
  4. Spread the nuts evenly on a baking sheet covered in parchment paper
  5. Cook in oven for 10 to 15 minutes, mixing once or twice
  6. Let cool down, and eat!
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  • 4
    I've seen plenty of recipes for spiced nuts that call for oil so the spices will stick (but don't require honey). I don't know if the oil is just to thin the honey out so it will coat better, but you could also get that by warming up the honey before mixing everything together. You'd also get oil released by the nuts as they warm up.
    – Joe
    Dec 20, 2016 at 17:17
  • Just try it :-)
    – Robert
    Jan 7, 2017 at 15:32

2 Answers 2

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I just looked at 10 different recipes for caramelized nuts, and of those 10, not a single one called for oil. That being the case, I think you're fine skipping the oil. If it doesn't seem liquid enough, warm it up before pouring. If you try it, be sure to come back and let us know how it goes!

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You can absolutely skip this step in your recipe and have quality results. Typically, a recipe for roasting nuts would include oil to enhance texture or flavour, and to provide a more even coating for any additional spices to catch onto the nut. With that said, nuts are usually oily on their own so you don't need to add more -- it's just going to make the nuts greasy, as you said. And as Joe said in his comment, heating up the honey prior to adding it to the recipe will give you that coating that you need for flavour distribution.

I would only caution that you ensure that you make up for the loss of the two tablespoons of oil by increasing the amount of honey that you're using by the same amount. Or at the very least, watch your results and see if you need to add a little bit of honey at a time. If you remove the oil altogether without increasing the honey or the sriracha sauce, you may have a more difficult time coating the nuts in the sauce.

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