I recently received a new smoker from my awesome family. I have been having a blast with this thing. So much so that I have forgotten to write down all my adventures. I will attempt to remedy that starting with this post.
Almonds are one of my absolute favorite snacks so I had to figure out how to make my own version of smokehouse almonds. This method seemed to be the least messy and was relatively easy to do. The final product was AMAZING! You have to try this. If you don’t have a smoker, you can use your BBQ grill, wood chips with an indirect cooking method.
Smokehouse Almonds
Ingredients
- 1-2 lbs Raw Almonds
- 2 cups Water
- 2 cups Brown Sugar
- 1 cup Salt
- 2 TBS Garlic Powder
- 2 TBS Chipotle Chili Pepper
Instructions
- Mix the water, brown sugar, salt, garlic powder & chili pepper together in a medium sauce pan. Don't worry about the heat in the chili powder, the water really knocks it down. But feel free to change the amount to your tastes.
- Use a wooden spoon and continuously mix the brine as you heat it to a simmer on the stove.
- Turn off the heat and add 1-2 lbs of Raw Almonds (Important! RAW).
- Brine nuts for 3 hours (you can play with this timeframe but 3 hours is about as long as I dare. Any longer and they will get too salty).
- Once the nuts have soaked, remove them from the brine.
- Spread out almonds out as evenly as possible on a girl topper, mesh basket, cookie sheet or colander. The point here is to not have them all clumped up on top of each other, allowing the smoke to get to all the surfaces as much as possible.
- Smoke almonds until done (250 for about 2 hours). I prefer apple or cherry wood but just about any smoking wood will work and taste great.
- Remove almonds from grill topper immediately after smoking or they will stick.
- Finish almonds in oven on low heat with the door open until dry. This is also important because the sugar in the brine makes these buggers sticky so they need to dry.
