Cook this: Smoky glazed pistachios from Snacks for Dinner

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Our cookbook of the week is Snacks for Dinner by Lukas Volger. Tomorrow, we’ll feature an interview with the author.

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To try another recipe from the book, check out: Orange and mustard marinated asparagus; and feta and jam tart.

With their sweet chili heat, Lukas Volger‘s toasted pistachios are perfectly snackable. So much so, mine didn’t last long enough to build a Snacks for Dinner meal around them.

I’m not beating myself up about it though. The recipe belongs to a chapter devoted to all things crispy-crunchy, which “epitomizes the word ‘snack’ more than any other food trait,” Volger writes. “For that reason, let these be your snack-snacks as well.”

Volger and his husband, Vincent, became “Costco people” during the pandemic. And at Costco, a one-pound bag of pistachios is a bit less of a splurge than it would be elsewhere.

Almonds, cashews or walnuts would also welcome this glazed treatment, Volger notes, but he’s partial to pistachios. At a small celebration in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in October 2020, he and Vincent included them in their wedding snack boxes.

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Alongside Volger’s “ideal” focaccia, toasted walnut and feta dip, mixed mushroom pâté, Persian cucumbers, almond cake with plums (a.k.a. “A Wedding Snack Cake”; all recipes are in the book) and pét-nat sparkling wine, these sweet and spicy pistachios were right at home.

“I love those, and I make them all the time,” says Volger. You can use ghee, clarified butter or butter to coat the pistachios, but the ghee is the star player, he adds. “The thing that really makes them delicious is the ghee. Roasting the nuts in ghee just adds this depth of richness that you wouldn’t get from any other kind of fat.”

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SMOKY GLAZED PISTACHIOS

2 tsp ghee, clarified butter or butter
1 tbsp honey
1 cup raw, shelled pistachios
1 tsp mild, smoky, dried chili (Aleppo or Marash, see note)
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 325°F (165°C).

Step 2

In a medium, oven-safe skillet, warm the ghee over medium-low heat. Add the honey, swirling the pan over the heat until the honey becomes a bit runny, then stir in the pistachios, coating them well, and sprinkle with the chili and salt.

Step 3

Transfer to the oven and cook, stirring every 10 minutes, until the coating thickens significantly and the nuts have darkened a shade, about 25 to 30 minutes (see editor’s note). They’ll still look a bit wet, but as they cool, the coating will harden. Scrape them onto a plate right after you take them from the oven and allow to cool completely.

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Makes: 1 cup

Note: To achieve the smokiness (of Syrian Aleppo or Turkish Marash/Maras pepper flakes), you can use smoked paprika instead, but the fruitiness will be lost — there unfortunately isn’t a perfect substitute.

Editor’s note: If your oven runs hot, it may take less time. It took mine roughly 15 minutes for the coating to thicken and nuts to darken, so pay attention to visual cues.

Recipe and image excerpted from Snacks for Dinner: Small Bites, Full Plates, Can’t Lose by Lukas Volger. Copyright © 2022 by Lukas Volger. Photography by Cara Howe. Used by permission of Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins.

Article content

Our cookbook of the week is Snacks for Dinner by Lukas Volger. Tomorrow, we’ll feature an interview with the author.

Article content

To try another recipe from the book, check out: Orange and mustard marinated asparagus; and feta and jam tart.

With their sweet chili heat, Lukas Volger‘s toasted pistachios are perfectly snackable. So much so, mine didn’t last long enough to build a Snacks for Dinner meal around them.

I’m not beating myself up about it though. The recipe belongs to a chapter devoted to all things crispy-crunchy, which “epitomizes the word ‘snack’ more than any other food trait,” Volger writes. “For that reason, let these be your snack-snacks as well.”

Volger and his husband, Vincent, became “Costco people” during the pandemic. And at Costco, a one-pound bag of pistachios is a bit less of a splurge than it would be elsewhere.

Almonds, cashews or walnuts would also welcome this glazed treatment, Volger notes, but he’s partial to pistachios. At a small celebration in Brooklyn’s Prospect Park in October 2020, he and Vincent included them in their wedding snack boxes.

Article content

Alongside Volger’s “ideal” focaccia, toasted walnut and feta dip, mixed mushroom pâté, Persian cucumbers, almond cake with plums (a.k.a. “A Wedding Snack Cake”; all recipes are in the book) and pét-nat sparkling wine, these sweet and spicy pistachios were right at home.

“I love those, and I make them all the time,” says Volger. You can use ghee, clarified butter or butter to coat the pistachios, but the ghee is the star player, he adds. “The thing that really makes them delicious is the ghee. Roasting the nuts in ghee just adds this depth of richness that you wouldn’t get from any other kind of fat.”

Article content

SMOKY GLAZED PISTACHIOS

2 tsp ghee, clarified butter or butter
1 tbsp honey
1 cup raw, shelled pistachios
1 tsp mild, smoky, dried chili (Aleppo or Marash, see note)
1/2 tsp kosher salt

Step 1

Preheat the oven to 325°F (165°C).

Step 2

In a medium, oven-safe skillet, warm the ghee over medium-low heat. Add the honey, swirling the pan over the heat until the honey becomes a bit runny, then stir in the pistachios, coating them well, and sprinkle with the chili and salt.

Step 3

Transfer to the oven and cook, stirring every 10 minutes, until the coating thickens significantly and the nuts have darkened a shade, about 25 to 30 minutes (see editor’s note). They’ll still look a bit wet, but as they cool, the coating will harden. Scrape them onto a plate right after you take them from the oven and allow to cool completely.

Article content

Makes: 1 cup

Note: To achieve the smokiness (of Syrian Aleppo or Turkish Marash/Maras pepper flakes), you can use smoked paprika instead, but the fruitiness will be lost — there unfortunately isn’t a perfect substitute.

Editor’s note: If your oven runs hot, it may take less time. It took mine roughly 15 minutes for the coating to thicken and nuts to darken, so pay attention to visual cues.

Recipe and image excerpted from Snacks for Dinner: Small Bites, Full Plates, Can’t Lose by Lukas Volger. Copyright © 2022 by Lukas Volger. Photography by Cara Howe. Used by permission of Harper Wave, an imprint of HarperCollins.