Cashew nuts rewards a little know-how: how to choose them, cook them, store them, and substitute in a pinch. Browse 213 recipes to cook with them.

What are cashew nuts?

Cashews are the soft, buttery one in the nut drawer. They snap less than an almond and chew more like a firm bean, with a mild sweetness and almost no bitterness. That gentleness is the whole point: cashews blend smooth where other nuts stay gritty.

They show up two ways in cooking. Whole or halved for crunch and bulk in stir-fries and curries, and ground or soaked for the creamy backbone of a sauce.

A raw cashew tastes flat and a little waxy. Toasting turns it golden and brings the butter forward.

Cooking With Cashews

Toast cashews in a dry skillet over medium heat, shaking often, until they are pale gold and smell sweet. Three to five minutes is usually enough. They burn faster than you expect because of their fat, so pull them the moment the edges color.

In savory cooking cashews are a stir-fry and curry staple. They go in near the end so they keep some bite, the way they do in Best Ever Chinese Chicken and Crispy Chicken Stir-Fry. In Indian cooking they are ground into a paste that thickens and enriches a gravy.

Soaked and blended, raw cashews make cashew cream. Cover them with hot water for 15 minutes, or cold for a few hours, then blend with fresh water until silky.

That cream stands in for dairy in soups, vegan frostings, and pasta sauce. It is the trick behind the Dr Fuhrman's Famous Anti-Cancer Soup.

Pairing and Common Mistakes

Cashews lean sweet and savory with ease. They love coconut and chili in Southeast Asian food, warm spice in Indian curries, and brown sugar or maple in baking and brittle.

The mistake to avoid is treating a cashew like an almond when you want crunch. Cashews soften fast in anything wet, and they go pasty rather than staying crisp. Add them late, or scatter them on top at the end, so they hold their texture.

Watch the salt, too. Salted cocktail cashews will throw off a sweet recipe, so reach for unsalted when you bake and season the dish yourself.

Substitutes

For a creamy base, blanched almonds soaked and blended come closest, though they need their skins off to match the smoothness. Macadamias blend even richer but cost far more.

For crunch in a stir-fry, peanuts are the natural swap and bring a similar soft snap. Almonds work too, but they read firmer and a touch more bitter.

In baking, cashews trade cup for cup with most other nuts. Just remember you are giving up some richness if you move to a drier nut like an almond.

Buying and Storing

You will almost never see cashews in the shell. The raw shell holds a caustic oil related to poison ivy, so they are always sold shelled, sorted as whole or as cheaper broken pieces. Pieces are fine for grinding into sauces and cream where shape does not matter.

Buy raw cashews if you plan to make cashew cream, since roasted ones blend grainy and taste toasted. Buy roasted and salted only for snacking.

Cashews are oily, so they go rancid in a warm cupboard. A rancid nut tastes sharp and stale, like old oil.

Store them airtight in a cool, dark spot for a couple of months, in the fridge for up to six, or in the freezer for a year. One bad handful taints a whole dish, so taste one before you commit a batch.

Nutrition

Quick facts

Where to find cashew nuts: Cashew nuts are usually found in the baking supplies section or aisle of the grocery store or supermarket.

Food group: Cashew nuts are a member of the Nut and Seed Products US Department of Agriculture nutritional food group.

In Chinese

腰果

British (UK) term

Cashew nuts

en français

noix de cajou

en español

anacardos

How much do cashew nuts weigh?

Amount	Weight
1 ounce	28 grams

Related

Nut and Seed Products

Recipes using cashew nuts

There are 213 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 213 recipes

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