Blanched Almonds are a useful ingredient in many recipes like Almond Feta, muffins, making your own almond meal, bliss balls, salads and much more. But did you know they’re extremely easy, albeit a little fiddly and time-consuming, to make yourself at home?
I was on the hunt for some blanched almonds for a recipe recently but had so many raw almonds at home that I just couldn’t justify purchasing more, just because they were blanched. So I researched how to blanch them myself and it is dead set so easy. Check out the method below!
Quantity & Time – depends on how many almonds you have!
Ingredients:
- Raw almonds
- water
Method:
- Bring a pot of water to the boil (needs to be enough water that it will cover your raw almonds when you put them in the pot).
- Add the almonds and boil for exactly 1 minute. If you boil for longer than a minute then the almonds will soften. This is ok if you’re going to use the blanched almonds for dips, almond cheese etc. but not if you want to dehydrate the almonds for use as hard nuts (like in granola, almond meal etc.).
- Remove the pot from the stove and strain the almonds in a sieve or colander. Rinse under cool water to stop the cooking process. You should notice that the almond skins have shrivelled a bit as they’ve separated from the almond nut.
- With your fingers, gently squeeze the almond from the base to the point. The almond skin will quickly slip off. I suggest you ‘squeeze’ the almonds facing bowl or towel as they can tend to fly off to all places in the kitchen!
- Pat the almonds with a tea towel. To dry the “skinless” almonds you can place them in a single layer on a sheet pan, which has been lined with a tea towel and leave to air dry. Alternatively you can dehydrate them in a dehydrator or a low oven.
- And that’s it, you now have blanched almonds