The false fruit (called cashew fruit or cashew apple) is edible, but it is very perishable. When ripe, the whole thing falls off the tree, and the bottom part is gathered for processing. The false fruit attached to the false nut looks like a pear with a little boxing glove hanging off the bottom. In the cashew, the ovary develops outside of the fruit, which really makes it a false fruit, since by definition fruits have seeds inside. That’s pretty weird, but it gets weirder. After that, the hardened lining must be removed by hand. They are usually roasted to release the fluid, which is collected for other uses, such as varnish. He has some pictures of the local “caju” fruit here.) The cashew stores this icky stuff in the lining around the seed, which makes cashews very difficult to process.
(Our friend Dan had not been told about this when he came across them in Thailand Brazil, and burned his mouth on a fresh cashew. Many plants in this family produce Urushiol, an oil that can cause a nasty, painful rash. Cashews instead have a lining around the seed that is filled with a nasty fluid.Ĭashews are in the same family ( Anacardiaceae) as mangoes, pistachios, sumac, and poison-ivy. True nuts develop a hard wall around the seed (e.g. Weird looking, isn’t it? And caustic, too!Ĭashews, like many of the culinary nuts listed above, are not true nuts in the botanical sense. When we found out, we knew more people should see it. However, that raised the question of what a cashew looks like in its shell. Why? It turns out that the cashew shell is toxic. But, come to think of it, you can get almonds, walnuts, pistachios, brazil nuts, hazelnuts, peanuts, chestnuts, pine nuts, pecans, and even macadamia nuts in a shell, but not cashews. These things should carry a warning label: “CAUTION: MAY BE HABIT FORMING.”Īnyway, while we eating them, we were asked if we knew why you can’t get cashews in the shell. Ever since we discovered them, we have been enjoying (and eating far too many of) the highly addictive Thai Lime & Chili Cashews from Trader Joe’s.
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