Slow Roasted Indonesian Cashews

Cyrilla Suwarsa and her family introduced us to Indonesian cashews with chile and lime leaves years ago and they’ve been a staff favorite ever since. For the first time we’re offering the same great cashews simply salted. Nothing else added. They’re nestled in a hand-woven reed basket, tied with string, and I think all together would make a very nice little gift.

Cyrilla and her team take several steps that others rarely do when processing nuts. For one, the cashews are hand harvested and slowly sun dried. As with other sun-dried foods like rice, couscous and tomatoes, the flavor gets more development this way compared to furnace drying. (It also uses no fossil fuels.)

She also sources nuts in shells, taking the extra step to peel them only as needed, which goes a long way to preventing rancidity—a common affliction of many packaged nuts.

Finally, Cyrilla’s cashews are slow-roasted. The roasting makes the cashew have a firm pop to its texture. These don’t have the chewy fleshiness you might be used to with typical cashews and you’re not going to miss it. Roasting also brings out more flavor—these have loads of it.

These are made exclusively for Zingerman’s. Supplies are limited.