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Roasted Hazelnuts
Roasted Hazelnuts is a reconstructed Ancient recipe for a classic snack and preservation method of cooking hazelnuts over hot rocks in a pit oven. The full recipe is presented here and I hope you enjoy this classic Ancient version of: Roasted Hazelnuts.
prep time
40 minutes
cook time
480 minutes
Total Time:
500 minutes
Serves:
10
Rating: 
Tags : Vegetarian RecipesBritish Recipes
The pit oven is one of the oldest and most traditional ways of coking both meats and root vegetables. The recipe given below is for a reconstructed Stone Age pit oven where the food is essentially cooked on hot rocks. We know from midden heaps that stone age hunter gatherer ventured huge distances for hazel harvests and once they were in the hazel groves they would gather and then roast the nuts. Cooking the hazelnuts helps with their storage and it also makes them better food. Raw nuts are not that digestible, particularly for children and cooking them makes them much better eating. Roasted nuts can also be converted into flour.
Ingredients:
fresh, ripe, hazelnuts (as many as you can gather)
dock leaves or burdock leaves
grass
Method:
To form the oven dig a shallow pit (about 80cm deep) that is bowl shaped and large enough to conn your meat and vegetables.
Line the sides and base of the pit with large igneous (volcanic) stones (these will not crack as they are heated). Carefully store the earth removed from the pit to the side (this will be used to cover the pit to allow the steam to stay inside.
Build a large fire over the stones and set light to it. Allow the fire to burn down to embers and when the fire has gone carefully brush away and remaining wood (be careful doing this as the stones will be very hot.
Whilst the fire is burning down collect your hazelnuts. When the fire has been cleared scatter your hazelnuts over the top of the stones. Cover the nuts with a thick layer of greens (this will prevent soil or sand from sitting directly on top of the nuts). Make certain everything is covered, so that when you cover the pit with the soil you removed from it, no soil will reach the food inside.
Tamp down the soil and put the sods on top (this seals the oven so that the food inside steams slowly). Now go away and leave the pit oven to roast the nuts over night.
The following morning, carefully remove the top covering of soil from the pit oven, clear away the wilted greens covering the nuts and retrieve the cooked hazelnuts. To crack a nut the stone age way, sit the base of the nut on a flat stone and strike the top (the pointy end) with another stone. This will crack the nut far more cleanly than any modern method. The nuts can be eaten as they are or they can be ground to flour. You can also store the cooked but unshelled nuts in jars for later consumption. Prepared this way, the nuts are an excellent carbohydrate source and the nut flour can be used as a thickener for stews.
