Pine nuts

What are pine nuts? About the ingredient pine nuts. Including 366 recipes with pine nuts, nutrition data, and where to find it.

Contents

1. About
2. Nutrition facts
3. Where found
4. Food group
5. Weights & measures
6. Recipes360
7. References
8. Related

About

Pine nuts contain, depending on species, between 10–34% protein, with Stone Pine having the highest content.

When first extracted from the pine cone, they are covered with a hard shell (seed coat), thin in some species, thick in others. The nutrition is storembryo (sporophyte) in the centre. Although a nut in the culinary sense, in the botanical sense pine nuts are seeds; being a gymnosperm, they lack a carpel (fruit) outside.

The shell must be removed before the pine nut can be eaten. Unshelled pine nuts have a long shelf life if kept dry and refrigerated (at –5 to +2 °C); shelled nuts (and unshelled nuts in warm conditions) deteriorate rapidly, becoming rancid within a few weeks or even days in warm humid conditions.

Pine nuts are commercially available in shelled form, but due to poor storage, can have poor flavour and may be already rancid at the time of purchase. Consequently, pine nuts are often frozen to preserve their flavour.

Recipes using pine nuts

There are 360 recipes that contain this ingredient.

All 360 recipes

Created: September 9, 1999 Last updated: over 5 years ago