Cashews -- What the Heck are They?

My husband tells me that when he was growing up he used to love to eat cashew fruit.

Huh.... I had never heard of a cashew fruit before.

Yep, he tells me. Each cashew fruit has one nut.

Wow... that explains why they're so expensive. I imagine a mountain of fruits thrown aside to make one can of cashews.

So what IS a cashew?

The cashew comes from a tree that is native to Brazil. The nut is not actually a nut, but a seed that dangles from the bottom of the cashew fruit, known as the cashew apple (or marañon). The fruit is sweet, but very delicate. It is commonly used to flavor aguas frescas (a refreshing fruit drink). In Brazil, the cashew fruit juice (caju) is very popular.

The nut (sorry, seed) is contained inside a hard double shell, which contains a resin with an irritant related to poison ivy. That would explain why my husband grew up eating the fruit more than the seed. He tells me that the shells are roasted so that the nuts will come out of the outer shell and so that the resin can be removed.

According to several sources, the nuts are cracked manually. Then they are graded, according to how white they are and as to how broken they are. After grading, they are roasted.

So... what brought all this on? I noticed that they started selling caju juice (from the cashew fruit!) at HEB. It's also a great example of how many of us don't know where our food comes from. It's amazing how labor-intensive cashew harvesting is, yet I can go to the store and buy a can of hundreds (!) of cashews for around 4.00.

picture from gigglemoose.com