Home Kitchen How To Blanch and Peel Almonds

That moment when you realize the recipe calls for blanched almonds.

And of course you don’t have any. Of course when I say you, I mean me.

Because that’s exactly what happened to me today. Actually, I forgot to pick up blanched almonds at the store last week and when I realized that I was not surprised. I do that alllll the time. I couldn’t {and wouldn’t} run back out to the store because of all this snow and the fact it was a hundred degrees below zero. Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a few degrees.

But lucky for me I had a small bag of salted almonds left from this dish, so I turned to the internet and Googled “How to remove the skin off of almonds”. Not only did I find out that you can actually do this at home, but it’s relatively straightforward.

Unless you need 2 pounds of blanched almonds, then I probably would’ve made that trip back to the store.

But since I only needed a small amount, I decided to simply go for it… and blog it for you!

Since the almonds in my cupboard were salted, I threw them into a small colander…

…and ran the almonds under cold water to wash all that salt away. If you have un-salted nuts you can {obviously} skip this step.

Then only toss them into a heat safe bowl.

Fill your pot with water…

And bring a couple of cups of water to a boil. Of course if you have a lot of almonds to blanch then gather more water.

Once it starts boiling, pour it directly over the almonds.

Let the almonds sit in the hot water for a minute, two tops. If you let them sit too long, they could lose their crunch.

Then drain the almonds, or you could save the water… I’ve read that you could use the almond water and pour it over your garden. But since mine is currently under 16+ inches of snow, I didn’t.

Throw the almonds on to a dry towel. The nuts cool down relatively quickly, so you don’t have to wait long.

You’ll notice the almond skin is bubbly and pulled away from the nut itself. This makes it truly straightforward to only peel that skin right off.

See. It’s truly that unfussy. A little time consuming but unfussy.

Discard the almonds skins or pop them into your compost, and only like that I now have blanched almonds. And I probably saved a lot of money.

If you have a big batch of almonds, enlist your kids, friends, your wife or husband and/or neighbors… turn it into an almond peeling party?! Wait.

Either way peeling almonds does take a little bit of time, but completely worth it.