Soaking nuts for digestion allows you to unlock the nutrition in nuts, making it more available to your body, while also minimizing the damage nuts can cause. Find out how to reduce antinutrients in nuts, why activating nuts might be good for you, and how soaking nuts improves digestion. Guess what? It’s not difficult, expensive, or time consuming.
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Nuts can be part of a healthy diet. Many people love them, and know that their protein, fat, and other nutrients are good for us. They are really convenient, and taste good in all sorts of dishes.
However, nuts have a dark side. (Not too dark, though. We can easily brighten up the darkness!) Nuts can be difficult to digest, and even cause damage to our digestive tract. Especially if we eat a lot of them, or if we already have some sort of gut health issue.
Sadly, many of us do have gut damage for all sorts of reasons. If you know you have a digestion-related problem, you know it is no fun. If your digestion seems fine, but you have another health problem, chances are your gut is involved, even without digestive symptoms.
That is to say, immune-related issues (like allergy and autoimmune disease), skin problems (like acne and eczema), mental health struggles (like anxiety or difficulty focusing), hormone imbalance, and many common health challenges, always have a gut problem as a part of the cause.
What’s Wrong with Nuts?
In a way, it isn’t so much that something is “wrong with nuts” as how they are designed. Understanding that design, we can work with the way nuts are intended to function so that they work for us and not against us.
Nuts, like grains and seeds, are designed to survive. They naturally develop a coating that makes them somewhat resistant to pests and spoiling. There are plenty of human-caused problems with our food, but this is not one of them. It benefits the nuts and the people.
The nuts (or seeds or grains) have higher odds of making it to the next opportunity to be planted and grow (naturally or via a farmer), and the people have better odds of success at storing them to eat or to grow next year. It is a thoughtful design!
Have you ever soaked seeds before planting them? It is the same idea; soaking them makes them a bit quicker to sprout. If you don’t soak them, they will soak in the soil and still germinate a little later. Or not at all if there isn’t enough moisture. Read more here!
Antinutrients in nuts
The downside is that these substances, often referred to as “antinutrients”, aren’t so good for us. Lectins and phytic acid are hard on our digestive tract. “Enzyme inhibitors interfere with digestive and metabolic enzymes. As a result, the nuts are harder to digest and their nutrients are more difficult for us to absorb.
There is a good chance you will eat other foods along with nuts sometimes. You probably want to absorb all that nutrition as well as possible, without interference from easily removable substances. Some of the substances in nuts bind to minerals we want!
How big a problem is this? Is it really worth doing anything about?
Well, if you eat a few nuts now and then, and you are in great health, it may not be worth your effort. If I eat a few almonds or pistachios that haven’t been prepared carefully, I don’t notice a thing. And I don’t think twice about having nuts here and there, like at a social gathering or as an emergency snack away from home.
Since I’m not in perfect health, I make a habit of soaking nuts for digestion at home. It is simple enough, and helps nuts taste even better!
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How Soaking Nuts Works
This isn’t hard! It is actually super easy, but it does take time. Two days, in fact. Most of that time will not require your involvement, though. A minute or two at first, then a few minutes midway, then a few more minutes at the end. So, 10 minutes? Or thereabouts.
Start with raw nuts. Organic would be ideal, but this works with conventionally grown nuts. The process doesn’t work the same with roasted ones. Cashews are a little different, which I will explain.
Soak the Nuts
When nuts soak, the “antinutrients” break down. Adding salt to the water facilitates the process; use a mineral-rich salt, and not iodized table salt. Put the nuts into a big bowl, allowing room for them to expand as they absorb water.
Mix in a tablespoon or two of salt. I use inexpensive Himalayan salt. Then add enough filtered water to cover by an inch or two, and cover the bowl to keep out any flies that may happen along. Set the bowl somewhere out of the way for 18 hours if you do pecans, like I did. (Keep reading for soaking times for other nuts!)
You will need to think through the timing; I set my pecans to soak after lunch, at around 2:00. Since it is hard to think in 18-hour chunks of time, you need to do a bit of math. I knew that 18 hours later, I would be making breakfast and would have time to take the next step. Think that through so this works into your obligations and habits.
Dry the Nuts
After 18 hours (or the time the nuts you soaked require), drain them and rinse with fresh water.
The nuts are fine to eat at this point, but they will be damp and a bit mushy. If that works for your purpose, you are ready to use them. They will not last long in this state, so use them right away or refrigerate them and use within a day or two.
If you want crispy nuts that you can store and enjoy for weeks to come, you will want to dry them. There is more than one way, of course. You could lay them out in the sun, covered with something to keep away the critters. Soaking nuts is not a new idea, and presumably people used to do it this way. If you don’t want to, you have other options:
- toast quickly in your oven
- dry in your oven on low temperature
- put them in a food dehydrator
Oven toasting
This is the fastest option! It is ideal if you want the toasty flavor, it is a good time to use your oven (not super hot and the oven isn’t in use), and you are on hand to watch the nuts.
Spread the nuts on a baking sheet or two. Try for a single layer, preferably over parchment so they toast pretty evenly. Set them into the oven at 350° F. Both sheets can go in at once on separate racks.
Start watching them very carefully after about 15 minutes; it will take longer than that because they are wet (so, longer than you may expect to toast dry nuts), but I have found the time to be a bit unpredictable. When they darken and you try one and find it is crispy, take them out. They will crisp up a little more as they cool.
Another clue is the smell; if you notice a toasty, nutty aroma that prompts your mouth to water, check them right away! They may be done and about to burn. That wonderful aroma is the just-right point.
Cool and store in covered containers. Walnuts need to be refrigerated, as they turn rancid quickly. Read more about oven-toasting nuts.
Oven Drying
This method is similar, but you use a lower temperature. It takes up your oven for a long time, though. I usually did this before I had a food dehydrator, and it worked fine. It will heat the kitchen up, though.
Though slower, a lower drying heat is better for the nuts.
Prepare the nuts the same as for oven roasting, but set the oven to 150° F. Or as low as you can. Mine goes only down to 170° F, so I did that. It will take all day, but you won’t be likely to burn them.
Cool and store in covered containers. Walnuts need to be refrigerated, as they turn rancid quickly. Learn more about the low temp oven method.
Dehydrator
A third option is to use a food dehydrator. I found a secondhand one that was close to new, and I use it only for nuts. It takes about 24 hours, and is totally hands-off. Mine is a bit noisy, so consider the noise. If you can’t find one secondhand, this one looks pretty good.
After you rinse the nuts, spread them over the dehydrator trays. Try for a single layer, but it will still work if they aren’t that thinly spread out. The air blows through pretty convincingly. 2 pounds of nuts distributes nicely over my 4 trays, but 3 pounds still turns out fine.
Cool and store in covered containers. Walnuts need to be refrigerated, as they turn rancid quickly.
Questions About Soaking Nuts
Is the salt necessary?
The salt helps break down phytic acid. I use it, and sometimes add a little whey. You aren’t as likely to get pathogens growing in the water with salt. Some people use plain water.
Will the nuts taste salty?
No, you rinse the salt off. If you want them to be salty, you will need to add more salt.
Will soaking nuts work for a person with a nut allergy?
No, not with a true, IgE-mediated allergy, where the person could have an anaphylactic reaction and may carry an Epi-pen. This is because the proteins are still intact. You will still need to avoid nuts with a nut allergy until the allergy heals. (Gut healing is essential to resolving a food allergy.) Once that happens, soaking them is still a good idea.
You should work with a good allergist to know whether you have a nut allergy, and to know when you have healed from the allergy. The allergist may have you “challenge” the nut under medical supervision at first, since testing is unreliable and a life threatening reaction is a thing to avoid.
If the “allergy” is more like a sensitivity, you may find soaking the nuts helps. For example, if you burp a lot after eating nuts, you may do fine with soaked nuts. Proceed carefully, and consult an allergist if you aren’t sure.
How do I go about soaking different nuts?
The length of time needed is a little different for different nuts. Cashews are different altogether in that even “raw” cashews have already been treated with heat before you buy them in the store. Unless, of course, you harvest and shell them yourself, in which case they are truly raw. Learn more about cashews here.
As with so many health and cooking topics, you will find different soaking times recommended by different sources. Some people just soak them overnight and call it good. I try to follow this guide, but I just use room temperature filtered water:
processedfreeamerica.org
Will the nuts taste different?
I don’t notice much, if any, difference in taste between soaked and unsoaked nuts. They might be slightly milder, almost sweet, after soaking and drying. Walnuts are the only ones I think taste different. Sometimes walnuts can taste a little bitter, but that seems to go away after soaking them.
Is soaking nuts the same as sprouting them?
No, but it is similar. The soaking process is the beginning of sprouting. It is faster and simpler to soak them; that is why I do it. If you sprout nuts, you will see little “tails” growing from the nut (or bean, etc.); these are the sprouts.
Sprouting nuts takes a few days, and to do that you need to keep changing to water so the nuts don’t spoil. Sprouted nuts are superior to soaked ones; learn more about how to sprout nuts here.
Can I buy nuts that are prepared for me?
If this all seems like too much work and hassle, it is possible to buy sprouted nuts. They are more expensive; you will save a lot by preparing your own. There is a time for purchasing them, though. For example:
- price is no object
- you have more money than time
- your kitchen space is drastically limited
- you are too sick to do much at all
- you eat very few nuts, anyway
You may find sprouted nuts at your local health food store, or even a regular grocery store. You can also order them online. I have been pleased with some we purchased from Thrive Market. Here are some other options:
Once you have your beautifully prepared, delicious, crispy nuts, what will you do with them? Here are some things I like to do:
- snack on them right from the jar
- sprinkle them over salads
- add them to chicken salad
- mix up a trail mix
- chop them into cookies, cakes, pumpkin bread, banana muffins, etc.
- spice them up!
What do you love to do with nuts?
Prepare in bulk ahead of the holidays or other busy seasons so you have a good stash!