Quality Nut Pastes

[Paul Bacino]

So,

 

I have been following an Ice cream thread,  which calls for nut pastes like Pistachio and hazelnut. 

 

The links are for products from the UK  ,  Ie Whynut 

 

Any of these available in the USA  or a good quality nut paste source.  Trying to play with a few of Ruben's ice cream recipes.

 

http://icecreamscience.com/category/recipes/

 

 

Paul

[JoNorvelleWalker]

5 hours ago, Paul Bacino said:

So,

 

I have been following an Ice cream thread,  which calls for nut pastes like Pistachio and hazelnut. 

 

The links are for products from the UK  ,  Ie Whynut 

 

Any of these available in the USA  or a good quality nut paste source.  Trying to play with a few of Ruben's ice cream recipes.

 

http://icecreamscience.com/category/recipes/

 

 

Paul

 

Paul, from my most recent post in the ice cream thread last week:

http://www.rejuvenative.com/pistachio-butter/

 

I found the quality to be good, but not perfectly smooth.  About as smooth as most commercial creamy peanut butter, that is to say not Natural Jif smooth.  The company offers several other nut butters but pistachio is the only one I've tried.

[teajay]

I've picked up Hazelnut paste from http://www.lepicerie.com/ in the past for the Hazelnut Cake from Batali's Babbo. They have a few options for Hazelnut and all kinds of other nut pastes. Needed to throw a couple other misc items in the cart to hit the minimum transaction amount, which wasn't too bad. 

[pastrygirl]

If you have a food processor you can try making your own.  Hazelnuts will liquefy after a few minutes.  I seem to recall having more difficulty with pistachios, maybe they are not as oily. 

[JoNorvelleWalker]

2 hours ago, pastrygirl said:

If you have a food processor you can try making your own.  Hazelnuts will liquefy after a few minutes.  I seem to recall having more difficulty with pistachios, maybe they are not as oily. 

 

Yes, according to Modernist Cuisine at Home:  "Because of its high fat content, hazelnut gelato does not look as smooth as pistachio gelato does..."

 

I would think a blender would work better than a food processor for nut butters but I don't own a blender.  Nor, unfortunately, a colloid mill.  Perhaps someday.  Unless a centrifuge gets here first.

 

Actually, when I made up my most recent batch of pistachio gelato, it seemed that homogenization reduced the particle size in the mix, whereas trying to use the rotor-stator homogenizer on the nut butter itself would not have done anything because the viscosity of the nut butter is too high for a rotor-stator homogenizer to process.

 

Though if truth be told, I'm inclined to forget about fancy nut butters and just use Jif.  Seriously.