When you have a large crop of hazelnuts from the garden or farmstand, you don't have time to casually include them in complicated recipes or to frantically figure out how to use them up before they go bad without getting sick of them. You want to make the most of your harvest and to actually enjoy it.
Multiple parts of this tree are usable. The uses listed below refer to hazelnut nuts unless otherwise indicated.
Here at Plant to Plate, we like to keep things simple! Here are some of my favorite ways to use or preserve hazelnuts:
- Add them to sautés and stirfry dishes.
- Add them to oatmeal, buckwheat, and other hot grains.
- Top toast, crostini, and bagels with hazelnuts, plums, and cream cheese.
- Add them to quickbreads, muffins, and other baked goods, alone or with cherries.
- Make a simple soup. A few ideas for simple soup combinations with hazelnuts are as follows:
- Add the nuts, inner bark, flowers, flowerbuds, and leaves to other soups and broths.
- Make energy balls with hazelnuts, sunflower seeds, and puffed amaranth or sorghum. Ingredients like turmeric, other herbs, cacao nibs, dried dates, and other dried fruits can also be added if desired.
- Add them to trail mixes and other energy mixes.
- Add them to granola.
- Use them as a Floor in an Interesting Salad. (Wondering why I capitalized those letters? Read more about Interesting Salads here!)
- Add them to other salads.
- Make hazelnut butter.
- Make your own chocolate-hazelnut spread by blending hazelnuts, cocoa powder, and a sweetener of your choice.
- Make a tea. Hazelnut leaves and flower buds can be made into an infusion or added to an infusion blend. Hazelnut inner bark and nuts can be made into a decoction or added to a decoction blend.
- Dry them. Hazelnut nuts, inner bark, leaves, flowers, and flowerbuds can all be dried for later use.
Further Reading
Growing hazelnuts? Check out these quick facts like their best growing conditions, companion plants, and expected yields.
Hazelnuts are also featured in these articles: