Pickles by Brian Crane for September 27, 2015

After my certified nutcracker broke on an almond, I bought a drop-forged pair of plyers, dedicated to the duty of cracking nuts and taking names. No unsplit pistachio stands a chance.

I once broke a filling trying to open a pistachio.

And the shells can be used to scour jet-engine turbines. You just take a bucket of them and throw them into the intake.

At least opening them you burn off calories eating them causes!!!

Use the pointy half of a previous shell to open the rest of the shells.

Remember when they were red…

Ah, Snap!

I buy them without the shell, lightly salted.

Using another shell does work, I’ve done it! Still takes forever though. I used pistachios in baking once and it took about an hour to open enough.

So why do you eat them?

xxx

no more red dye number 2. the world may go into mourning

Didn’t care for the red dyed ones or the salted ones. We get the roasted, unsalted ones. If one isn’t split enough to open easily, I leave it for my brother, who uses his teeth to open those. My teeth would break instead of the nut.

Back before the Shah was deposed, we used to get a big bag of Iranian pistachios every Christmas.They were smaller, but so much tastier than those grown in the US.

The red ones were gross. All that dye, pink fingers. Earl, take a half shell from another pistachio and use it to pry open a stubborn one.

@Nos Nevets“The red colour is made from adding ground up dried cochineal beetles.”.From:

http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2002-07/why-are-some-pistachios-red.“The traditional growing and harvesting methods used by pistachio farmers in countries such as Iran, Syria, and Greece often left blemishes on the outer shell, which American importers would mask with a red vegetable dye. But with the growth of the domestic pistachio industry, the days of the red pistachio may be numbered. About 96 percent of the pistachios currently sold in the United States are grown in California. These nuts are harvested without blemishes, which makes the red dyes moot.”.

dhg, which is not to say hat ground up beetles aren’t tasty(by the way, not that I care, but they ARE kosher)

Does anyone remember the Naked Gun movies, I can’t remember which one it was, but one of them had a scene where 2 cops were discussing the case in an unmarked police car while eating red pistachios. They were spitting the shells out the open windows while they talked and their lips and fingers were the bright red of the shells. When they were done talking the police officer on the passanger side went to get out of the car and he had to push the door open through empty shells piled up almost to the window.

Pistachio nuts are good though — it’s worth all the trouble to open them XDD

I use a small paring knife to open the pistachios that I can’t shell with my fingers.