I'm not looking to exactly replicate the commercial stuff but am interested to see how the process works from a very basic level and if I can generate something useful. Some of my recipes call for PNP as, say, 30% of the ingredients so I might be able to get away with this cruder form and it might give some interesting flavours/textures. And its always fun to expeiment with chocolate - its one of those magic ingredients where people always seem happy to eat mistakes.

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Typically, yes, but this is not a requirement. It depends on the flavour you want. A roasted nut paste will taste much more of the roast - so that there are identifiable similarities between, for instance, hazelnut and almond nut paste, if the nuts are roasted.

By contrast unroasted nuts produce milder flavours, and sometimes that's what you want. Again, pure unroasted almond paste is very mild and a good background for other subtle flavours that you don't want overwhelmed by something too strong. Unroasted hazelnuts, btw, will complement fruits rather better than the roasted version which is better with spices, coffees, chocolate, etc.

However, simply putting your nuts through the grinders will probably not generate results comparable to commercial nut paste - at least not initially, and possibly never, if the type of mill isn't set up to achieve that result. So experimentation will be in order here.

Alex Rast
Alex_Rast_Alternate@hushmail.com

I was wondering if anyone knew about commercial pure nut pastes (PNPs). Specifically, do they roast the nuts before they grind them? I'm thinking specifically of hazelnuts here.

As way of background, PNP is hard to come by in my part of the world but a local nut retailer makes their own peanut butter. They also put other nuts through the grinder so I thought to try and use it to make pure hazelnut paste - I'm just not sure if the nuts should be roasted first.

Thanks