Bar Nuts: The Complete Guide to Spiced, Roasted and Seasoned Nuts, Why They Work with a Drink, and How to Make Your Own
The bowl of nuts on a bar is the oldest trick in hospitality, and it is a trick. Salt makes people thirsty, so they order another drink. Fat and crunch keep hands busy and people seated. A nut is cheap, keeps for weeks, and needs no kitchen. Bartenders have known this since there were bars, and the quality of the bowl has always told you something about the place: a dish of stale peanuts from a can says one thing, and a warm bowl of rosemary-and-brown-sugar mixed nuts says another. This guide is about the second kind: what roasting and seasoning do to a nut, the styles worth knowing, the bags on our shelf, and the ten-minute recipe for the bar nut that a New York restaurant made into an institution.
What roasting does
A raw nut is bland, faintly sweet, a little waxy, and nutritionally excellent, which is not the point at a bar. Roasting changes it three ways. Heat drives off moisture and makes the nut crisp rather than chewy. The Maillard reaction, the same browning that makes a caramel taste of more than sugar and a coffee bean taste of coffee, builds toasty, savory, slightly bitter flavors on the surface. And the nut's oils migrate outward, carrying flavor and giving the surface something for seasonings to stick to. Over-roast and the oils turn bitter and the nut tastes burnt; under-roast and the seasoning falls off and the nut stays raw at the center. A good roaster, like a good chocolate maker, has a profile for each nut, since an almond, a cashew and a peanut brown at different rates.
What seasoning does
Seasoning a nut is a question of adhesion and balance. Something has to make the spice stick: a little oil, an egg white, a sugar syrup, or the nut's own surface oil if it is seasoned hot from the oven. And the seasoning has to do what bar food does, which is make you want a drink and then another nut: salt first, then a savory note, then heat or acid or sweetness for interest. The best commercial bar nuts are built on that formula whether the spices come from Punjab or the Carolinas, and the difference between them is which cuisine supplied the savory note.
The styles on our shelf
Indian and Middle Eastern spice. Varah Gourmet, an American company built on Indian spice traditions, makes the most spice-forward bar nuts we carry, and they show how a serious spice blend, of the kind our spice harvest piece describes at the source, can carry a snack. The za'atar almonds are dusted with the Levantine blend of thyme, sumac and sesame; the sumac's acidity is what makes them refreshing rather than heavy, and they belong beside a bitter aperitif. The tikka masala nut mix is warm, tomato-tinged and gently hot, the flavor of the curry on a mixed nut. The Thai spice cashews lean on red curry, lime and coconut, and cashews, softer and sweeter than almonds, are the right nut for it. The masala trail mix adds seeds for texture, and the masala cranberries are the outlier: a dried fruit seasoned savory, tart and spiced, which is the thing to scatter through a bowl of plain roasted nuts to make it interesting.
Southern and American. The Virginia peanut is the aristocrat of American peanuts, large, crisp and grown in the sandy soil of the Carolina and Virginia coastal plain, and King Floyd's, a company that began in cocktail bitters and thinks about snacks as cocktail accessories, seasons them with dill pickle: salt, vinegar and dill on a fried peanut, which is exactly what a beer or a martini wants. It is the bag to open at a summer table with hot sauce nearby.
Japanese umami. Eleven Madison Home, the pantry line from the team behind the New York restaurant of the same name, makes nori bar nuts: mixed nuts glazed and tossed with toasted seaweed for the deep, oceanic savoriness the Japanese call umami. They are the most refined bar nut we carry and the one to serve with a very cold, very dry martini, per our martini hour, or beside a tin of something from the tinned fish shelf, where the seaweed meets its relatives.
Nuts on the board
Beyond the bar, a small pile of seasoned nuts does a job on a cheese board that plain nuts cannot: crunch, salt and a second flavor against the cheese. Our cheese plate math counts them as the crunch category. Match the seasoning to the cheese: za'atar almonds with feta or a fresh goat cheese, nori nuts with an aged Gouda, dill pickle peanuts with a sharp cheddar. Warm them first if you can.
The Union Square bar nut
The most famous bar nut in America was served warm at a New York restaurant's bar in the 1990s and has been copied everywhere since. This is the idea, in a home version; it takes ten minutes and the smell alone improves a party.
- 2 cups (about 10 oz) mixed unsalted nuts: almonds, cashews, pecans, walnuts, hazelnuts
- 2 tablespoons fresh rosemary, chopped
- 1 tablespoon light brown sugar
- 1/2 teaspoon cayenne or a pinch of chile flakes
- 1 tablespoon butter, melted
- 1 teaspoon flaky salt, or to taste
- Heat the oven to 350°F. Spread the nuts on a baking sheet and toast for 8 to 10 minutes, until fragrant and just colored.
- Meanwhile, stir the rosemary, sugar, cayenne, butter and salt together in a large bowl.
- Tip the hot nuts into the bowl and toss until coated. Taste for salt. Serve warm, in a shallow bowl, and watch them disappear.
Use good flaky salt, since it is the seasoning people taste first. In Denver, the nuts toast a minute faster than at sea level; watch them, per our altitude guide. Any of the bagged nuts above can be warmed the same way, five minutes in the oven, and served in a bowl as if you made them, which is a host's privilege.
Buying and keeping
Nuts are mostly oil and oil goes rancid, so buy in quantities you will finish in a few weeks and keep opened bags sealed, cool and dark; the freezer is a good home for plain nuts bought in bulk. A rancid nut smells of paint and tastes bitter and flat; trust the smell. Seasoned nuts keep less well than plain, because the seasoning attracts moisture and the roast has already opened the oils; a month is about right. Warm them before serving and they taste freshly made.
The bags are on our nut shelf at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, and ship nationwide from theambrosianpantry.com. Put out two bowls, one spiced and one warm from the oven, and you have done the bartender's oldest trick properly.
