The Nut Factory : Kitchen : ibrazil nuts

Brazil Nuts

Lecythidaceae is the genus

consists of 325 kinds of nut bearing trees in the American tropics, divided among 15 genera. They are all wild trees, a majority growing in the wet or waterfront locations along the Amazon and tributaries -a distance of 2400 miles from the Atlantic to Peru

Many of the brazil nuts are eaten by mankind. The genus Bertholetia in which our beloved BRAZIL NUT is dominant, comprises 75 species. The genus Lecythis in which the MONKEY POT trees a re numbered includes 50 species.

Brazil Nut

Outstanding among the great nut trees of the world, Bertholettia is unique in many ways. It is enormous in size, often 150 feet in height with a straight, bare trunk to 75 feet or more. The massive tree top towers over the lower Amazon jungle. The trees are at least 1,800 feet apart in the Jungle and the crop takes 18 months to mature. The trees flower in November and the final nuts are ready the May a year and a half later on each blossom.

The pods weigh 5 pounds each and there are up to 300 pods on a tree. They develop in groups of 3 or 4 clusters on 12" stout stalks 100 feet in the air. The force of the fall is frightening and has incredible velocity. It is so great that the fruit embeds in the ground. When the nuts ripen and fall it is dangerous, especially in rainy or windy days. The fruits can be collected only when they fall to the ground upon ripening, and there is a race with large rodents to gather the nuts. They can open the nuts with their powerful incisor teeth, especially after decay has softened the shell. Mostly Indians collect the Brazil Nuts in their river canoes and take them to market.

Sapucaia Nuts
Paradise Nuts
Monkey Pot Nuts

There are fifty kinds of these Monkey Pot trees in Brazil and Guyana. The name is derived because of the nut shape like a vase, or pot. This is considered the gourmet of jungle nutmeats because of the delicate flavor. When ripe, the lid on the Sapucaia Nut falls off while the pods are still on the tree, releasing the nuts which scatter over the ground and are wildly chased by monkeys that can run faster than man.. The nuts are rare and command a high price.

Skillet Nut A genus of 15 kinds of nut trees in Guyana and Brazil. The seedpod is 5" long, cylindrical, and 1 - 3/4" in diameter. The seeds are 1 1/2" long and good eating. They yield a crop once a year. The fruit is called a SKITTLE NUT because it is like a "skittle"

Guatecare
Watercare A genus of over 120 kinds of nut trees in tropical America. The Guatecare tree is a large tree found in Trinidad reaching over 100 feet tall, and 3 feet in diameter. Two varieties exist - black and white. The fruit in the white variety is a hard capsule opening by the lid coming off, and containing one to three conspicuously veined seeds.

Holupyxidium A genus of three trees in Brazil, bearing edible nuts. Not too much is known about this tree.

-----Original Message-----

Sent: Sunday, December 02, 2001 7:29 PM

To: Nuts@TheNutFactory.com
Subject: Cracking Brazil Nuts
Hello:
How are Brazil nuts unshelled in large quantities without breaking them. This is very hard to do with just one. It can't imagine how a machine could do it. Any insights?

* * *

I was in Puerto Maldernado, Peru watching this process in 1999. Thousands of pounds of Brazil Nuts are placed in a large steel drum and heated from below. As the Brazil Nuts bake - the moisture comes off each nut and the shells become brittle.

After the nuts have dried a bit and become a bit smaller in the shell - the nuts are individually cracked and sorted.

The cracking is done on long tables. Each person gets about 100 pounds of in-shell nuts a day in a bin next to where they work and each nut is loaded into a manual shotgun shell loader. The loader is simply a permanent bottom plate with a handle on the top that moves the top cylinder up and down by hand. As you pull down, the nut is broken in the vise-like device.

When the handle is pulled down, the nut cracks and the shells drop to the floor and the nuts are sorted by size and whole vs broken grades.

A good sorter can crack only 44 pounds of shelled Brazil Nuts a day so when I buy 100 cases of 44 pounds of Brazil nuts, I am purchasing about one days work from 100 employees. There are over 175 employees in the plant at any time during the shelling season....

Gene Cohen

Hello Gene;

Thanks for pointing me in the right direction. I heated a tray of nuts in the
oven last night to 170 F for 15 minutes and they shelled quite well. About
80% were whole and the rest were good sized pieces.

I have a small vertical hand press that works very well to put pressure in the
end of the nut for the shelling process.

Thanks

The trick is to dry the nuts in a oven to reduce the moisture and make the
shells brittle.

You can read more about this on our site at the following web page

http://www.thenutfactory.com/kitchen/edible/facts-brazil.html

hope this helps.

gene cohen

----- Original Message -----
From:
To: <catalog@thenutfactory.com>
Sent: Wednesday, January 22, 2003 1:42 PM
Subject: A Question

I find it just about impossible to shell brazil nuts and get whole nuts. Once in awhile there is a nut that is sufficiently loose in the shell that it will come out in one piece. I assume there is some kind of an "aging process" needed to allow easy removal of the whole nut.

Can you provide some guidance?

Thanks

Brazil Nut

Sapucaia Nuts Paradise Nuts Monkey Pot Nuts

Sapucaia Nuts
Paradise Nuts
Monkey Pot Nuts