Storing Nuts and Seeds

People ask a lot of questions on how you store nuts and seeds - as well as chocolates and other products...

This is the acceptable way to keep products fresh longer

read on

Message    From: Steve Cushing
Saturday, December 09, 2000
Subject: Product Freshness

Are your raw pumpkin seeds and sunflower seed kernels vacuum-packed? If  not, do the packages contain a date as to when they were processed? How  do you insure against rancidity? 

Steve .

Here is your answer....

We go through 50,000 pounds of raw pumpkin seeds a year. The crop comes in during August and is held in vacuum packed packages until we open them for processing and packaging.

We never date the packages because the life is extremely long and if stored ideally in a cool dry place the pumpkin seed can easily last a year as a stable food.

Regarding sunflower kernels, we use 45,000 pound semi truck loads every 6 to 8 weeks. Again the product is packaged in a plastic liner but in this case it is not air tight and vacuum packed. Like the pumpkin seed we go through a lot of product a year, it stores equally well in cool dry places, and moisture and heat are the natural enemies of keeping them for a long time.

Firms that date and firms that vacuum pack are usually larger firms that tend to package in huge volumes, place on warehouse shelves, sell and transfer to other warehouses, and finally resell in grocery stores.

If our distribution channels were as far ahead as these large firms, we would also have to vacuum pack and date code the packages. When you buy these larger firms products you can reasonable expect them to have been over 6 months old and sometimes a lot older. That leaves freshness and flavor something that cannot be preserved.

So we honor the old fashioned method of smaller firms. We store cool and dry, and we use exactly what we need in short intervals, we ship fresh and prompt to end consumers and retail stores who also move product quickly (such as produce departments), and over the 48 years we have never had a rancidity or stale complaint on a raw nut or seed except for the walnut which easily goes stale and rancid in a quick time.