Crunchy Candied Walnuts
These easy crunchy candied walnuts (or in other words restaurant style candied walnuts) take only 30 minutes to make and will blow your mind.
Servings: 2 cups
Equipment
- Food mesh strainer OR
- Stainless steel colander
- 1 small rimmed baking pan lined with paper towel
- 1 small rimmed baking pan lined with parchment paper
Ingredients
- 2 c raw walnuts
- ½ c sugar
- 2 c water or more
- vegetable oil as needed
Instructions
- In a sauce pan, combine walnuts, sugar, and water bring to boil then reduce the heat to medium. The water should be enough to cover 2-3 inches above the walnuts.2 c raw walnuts, ½ c sugar, 2 c water
- Simmer walnuts on medium high heat. Remember not to stir the pot constantly to avoid causing sugar to crystalize. Also don't go anywhere and pay attention to the pot the whole time.
- The mixture should be simmer from 15 to 20 minutes. You can stir 1-2 times when it is half way of the process (ideally after cooking for 10 minutes) to coat the walnuts evenly with sugar syrup.
- When many white bubbles start to appear on the surface, and the liquid reduced more than half, turn off the heat immediately. Don't let the sugar crystalize and form a white coat outside of walnuts. Also don't wait until the liquid reduce completely to turn off the heat.
- Remove the pot from the heat immediately and strain walnuts through a food mesh or stainless steel colander.
- Quickly lay the walnuts 1 inch away from each others on a rimmed baking pan that lined with parchment papers or aluminum foil (avoid paper towel at all cost).
- In a cooking pot, fill enough vegetable oil to fry walnuts (about 4 cups of oil).vegetable oil
- Bring oil temperature to at least 350F. Divide the walnuts into 3 batches and deep fry each batch for 1-2 minutes or until the color of walnuts turn deep brown.
- Immediately take walnuts out and line on another clean, rimmed baking pan line with parchment paper. If you use paper towel or oil-absorbed paper, the candied walnuts will stick to the paper and very hard to take them apart.
- Remember to have a little space between each walnut (about 1 in) or they might stick to one another.
- Let the walnut cool completely to room temperature before store them in an nonmetal airtight containers in a cool, dark place. They can be kept for up to a week.
- Eat them in a form of candied walnut or serve them as garnish or topping of a dessert and salad (see note below). Enjoy!