Welcome to the summary page for FabulousFusionFood's Spice guide to Tiger Nuts along with all the Tiger Nuts containing recipes presented on this site, with 11 recipes in total.

This is a continuation of an entire series of pages that will, I hope, allow my visitors to better navigate this site. As well as displaying recipes by name, country and region of origin I am now planning a whole series of pages where recipes can be located by meal type and main ingredient. This page gives a listing of all the Cornish recipes added to this site.

These recipes, all contain as a major flavouring.

Tiger nuts are the dried tubers of the sedge, Cyperus esculentus (also known as chufa sedge, edible rush, nut grass, rush nut, yellow nutsedge, yellow nutgrass, tigernut sedge, Zulu nut or earth almond). This is a species of sedge that is native to warm temperate to subtropical regions of the Northern Hemisphere, often cultivated for its edible tubers (tigernuts).

It can either be an annual or perennial plant, grows up to 90cm tall, with solitary stems growing from a tuber. The stems are triangular in section, and bear slender leaves 3–10 mm wide. The flowers of the plant are distinctive, with a cluster of flat oval seeds surrounded by four hanging, leaf-like bracts positioned 90 degrees from each other. The plant foliage is very tough and fibrous, and is often mistaken for a grass. The image here shows the whole plant on the left, the fresh tubers top right and the dried tubers, bottom right.

There are several varieties, depending on location, the main ones being: Cyperus esculentus var esculentus (native from the Mediterranean region east to India); Cyperus esculentus var hermannii (native to Florida); Cyperus esculentus var leptostachyus (native to the United States); Cyperus esculentus var macrostachyus (native to the United States) and Cyperus esculentus var sativus (native to Asia, but of cultivated origin).

The earliest records of tiger nuts come from Ancient Egypt, and a recipe for their use as a sweet snack (as well as pictures of the plant) were discovered on the tomb of Rekhmire. Today they are grown commercially in Egypt, Spain, Mexico and throughout West Africa (most notably in Ghana, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Northern Cameroon, Niger and Mali). It was the Moors who brought tiger nuts to Spain (where they are known as chufa) and there they are used to make the drink horchata, as well as being used as a form of flour for cakes. Although tiger nuts can be eaten raw, they are softer and easier to chew when they have been rehydrated or boiled in water. Eat them as a snack, or add them to sweet dishes.

In West Africa they are used as a vegetable (like any other root vegetable), to make drinks 'milks', as a flour used as a thickener and to make flatbreads and cakes and as a flavouring. In Morocco dried and ground tiger nuts are used as a spice and can be one of the ingredients in the spice blend, Ras el Hanout.

The edible part is the tubers of the plant. These are yellow in colour and are typically sold dried. They have a chewy texture and a sweet, nutty flavour reminiscent of coconut (in Nigeria they are sold 'as is' as a street snack). In French West Africa they are known as pois-sucré (sweet peas).

Tiger nuts can be purchased from health food shops, delis, food halls, Spanish, Chinese or African grocers, old-fashioned confectioners, or even shops selling fishing equipment (tiger nuts are also used as fishing bait, particularly for carp).

Tiger nut tubers have excellent nutritional qualities, with a fat composition similar to olives and a rich mineral content, especially phosphorus and potassium. The oil of the tuber (which is typically extracted by dry pressing) was found to contain 18% saturated (palmitic acid and stearic acid) and 82% unsaturated (oleic acid and linoleic acid) fatty acids.

Though typically used as a vegetable or as a flour, because they are sometimes used as a spice or flavouring, tiger nuts are included in this spice guide.