Toasting Pecans with a Yoder YS640S

Roasting or toasting nuts with a smoker may not be at the top of your list, but once you discover how easy it is, you may never buy commercially smoked nuts again.  Aside from being a tasty, healthy snack, using smoked nuts in place of unsmoked nuts can add a new level of flavor to an otherwise standard recipe.  Plus, toasting a nut can improve the texture — trading waxy for crunchy, such is the case with raw pecans.

The YS640S by Yoder Smokers has built in FireBoard technology. Which means you can track your nut smoking experiment via phone.

Toasting nuts is easily done with a wood-fired smoker or by using a pellet smoker with integrated temperature control.  This makes the process as easy as using your kitchen oven, and you get the added bonus of imparting a smokey flavor to the nuts.   The smoker used for the test batch for this article was the solidly built Yoder YS640S, which comes with built in  FireBoard technology.  A controller designed by FireBoard means that you can monitor your temperature and time remotely with the FireBoard cloud.  Click here to view the sample session from the FireBoard App.

Screen shot of a pecan toasting session from the FireBoard App.

The recipe is super simple:

Bring  your smoker to 200ºF (we used a Yoder YS640S with pecan wood pellets).  Fruit woods will yield a more intense smoke effect.

While the smoker is warming up, pour pecans in a roasting pan, spread out evenly making sure the nuts are not stacked on top of one another.

Reserve a handful of the raw nuts for comparison purposes.

Once at  temp, add the pan of pecans to the grill and let the smoking begin!!

Pecans after 2 hours at 200ºF in the YS640S

After 2 hours you can start checking the nuts for color.  With a long handled spoon  stir the nuts to rotate them for even heat.  Also visually compare with the reserved raw nuts.  At 2 hours color difference will be slight and the moisture will not be much different from the raw nut.

Pecans after 4 hours at 200ºF,.  Stir the pecans for even browning.

After 6 hrs at 200ºF,  toasted pecans with reddish brown cast.

From raw to roasted from left to right: raw pecan, nut pulled at two hours, four hours, and six hours. Note roasted pecans have a reddish-brown color.

A pan of pecans after smoking for 5 hours at 200ºF.

Toasted nuts will continue to cook as they cool down, and should be allowed to cool to room temp before packing up. Sampling warm, freshly smoked nuts is one of the best parts of this entire process!

High Protein, no sodium, no sugar, tasty, smokey super-snack

Smoked Pecans can be used in any recipe, as you would raw pecans.  Aside from being a fantastic snack, they are great whole on top of a salad with cranberries and chevre, in a warm bowl of oatmeal with apples and maple syrup.  Or chop them up for a fantastic for pecan encrusted glazed salmon.

Once cooled to room temperature, store the pecans in an air tight container to keep fresh and smokey.