Many recipes involve using hazelnuts and begin by having to remove the skin/ peel. I tried using the traditional method of roasting and patiently using a dish towel to remove the skins but soon lost patience and learnt to totally avoid recipes that require peeled hazelnuts if I was not able to locate pre-peeled hazelnuts in the supermarket.
*drum roll* until I discovered this easy peasy method by Alice Medrich which was popularised by Julia Child. It is much easier but messy and fiddly nevertheless!
Recipe:
500ml boiling water
2 tbsp baking soda
Any amount of hazelnuts that you can immerse in that liquid (I used 550g whole hazelnuts)
Method:
- Bring water to boil in a saucepan large saucepan (water will foam up and bubble over if you use a small saucepan).
- Add 2 tbsp baking soda – will foam up at this point
- Immediately add hazelnuts into the water and boil for 3 minutes – water will go reddish and foam up again
- Prep a small bowl and fill with cold tap water
- After 3 minutes, remove one hazelnut from the mixture and drop into cold water. Use your fingers to check if the skin of the hazelnut can be easily removed when you rub the hazelnut skin. If it doesn’t detach easily, return to the pan continue boiling for an additional minute and repeat test on a different sample.
- When done, pour the entire pan contents (hazelnuts and black coloured water) into a colander and run under cold water.
- Rub a bunch of hazelnuts between your hands (like when one rubs hands together in glee / warm up cold hands in winter) or use a disposable tea towel to remove hazelnut skin / peel. I also then dunked the remaining half peeled ones into a bowl of water to remove the remaining scraps of peel to minimise the mess.
- Then place on a kitchen towel lined tray / cooling rack to dry.
- If desired, toast in the oven for 15 minutes at 180 C.
I started out with 550g of hazelnuts (according to the packaging) and ended up with 500g of roasted peeled hazelnuts ( but some hazelnuts were consumed in the name of tasting).
Hope this was helpful! Stay tuned for the next tip on how to make praline.
Thank you for this tip, I will tray it ^_^