Homemade Chocolate Covered Almonds/soaking & Dehydrating Nuts

I've been making homemade chocolate covered almonds for a few years because I detest the [lack of] quality in most I have purchased in a store or on line. Generally, the chocolate on them stinks. I've eaten these for years because the combination of the almonds and the dark chocolate makes for a heart-healthy snack.

So I've bought raw almonds and a couple of large chocolate bars from the candy aisle (usually a 90% cacao and a regular milk chocolate), melted the chocolate in a double boiler, coated the almonds, laid them out on parchment paper, then sprinkled with sea salt. So far, so [very] good.

Then I read a couple of articles on the benefits of soaking nuts and seeds, and then dehydrating them. It's rather fascinating. Nuts and seeds contain enzyme inhibitors, preventing the food in them from being released until water is available and the seed can sprout (and digest the food.) Eating enzyme inhibitors reduces the efficiency of our own digestive enzymes. When nuts & seeds are soaked, the enzyme inhibitors are destroyed (to make the food available to the anticipated sprout.) This also makes them easier for humans to digest. Soaking and then dehydrating also makes the nuts crunchy rather than mealy.

Since I now have that Breville oven/air fryer/dehydrator, I thought I would give it a shot. So I soaked raw almonds overnight, and then dehydrated them for 24 hours. Other than worrying that I was beating the oven to death by having the fan run for so long, this worked out great! It really makes a big difference. The almonds are crunchy and kind of "lighter." I'm shoving them in my mouth as I type this. Just so much better than anything you can buy already made. And you get to choose your own chocolate coating.

The one part of the process I've yet to perfect is getting the almonds out of the chocolate and laying them apart to dry. Most sites say to pluck them out one at a time with 2 forks, let the excess chocolate slowly drip off, then gently lay on the parchment paper. Yeh, that worked fine for 5 or 6 of them. I may be retired but I ain't got all damn day! So I got out a big salad fork, scooped out maybe 10 at a time, dumped them on the parchment and then pushed them apart, as you can imagine most guys would. This left some in pools of chocolate that left chocolate flanges attached to the almonds when it set up. Ain't no big deal. It all eats. If I cared about aesthetics for a party or something, I could break off the flanges or hire interns to pluck & place.

The dollars work out like this:
A bag of Walmart raw almonds cost $9 for 25 oz. (just over 1.5#)
It takes (4) 3.1 oz chocolate bars to coat all 25 oz. If you get Lindt, it costs$2.75 each ($11 total)

That's about $12.80/# for homemade with brand-name chocolate
Trader Joe's are $19/#-$24/#
Others of dubious quality can be had for $8/# and higher

Martha Stewart has a recipe that calls for toasting the almonds in a 350' oven, then simmering in a pan with water+sugar+cinnamon to coat them with a syrup, then freeze, then coat with chocolate (again with the 2 fork removal method.) After the chocolate fully sets, she coats half in cocoa powder and half in confectioners sugar. (Leave it to Martha to over-complicate things.) Gonna try that next. Or at least I'll toast them, since they're already in the oven.

 

So what kind of almonds do you get? Do you know if they're raw, roasted, etc?

I got hooked on chocolate covered when the independent grocery store I shopped at set up a bulk foods display and they had them in it. Other than that, it's been M&M Almonds or these raw ones I chocolate cover myself.

 

I do tend to over-complicate things sometimes.

I recall that one year I decided I wanted to make from-scratch green bean casserole (you know, the one invented by Dorcas at Campbell's.) I used fresh green beans and made homemade mushroom soup and did my own onion rings. Blech.

But the almonds are worth it. At least there's no washing or chopping involved...just melt & coat.

 

Those were the $25/# ones.