Amber Walnut (琥珀核桃)

The other day, one of my co-workers gave me a huge bag of walnuts (uncracked and raw).  Everyone knows walnut is healthy for you but how many ways can you cook walnuts?  Thanks to Google, I found a whole list of recipes that uses walnuts.

From the list, I decided to go with "Amber Walnut" since it looks yummy.  To my dismay, I underestimated the amount of work involved to make this recipe.  It's simple but it's extremely time-consuming!  It's tasty but it doesn't justify the amount of work in my opinion.

I still have half a bag of the walnuts left and I am going to make something else with them.  I will only make this again if I have peeled walnuts at my disposal next time.

Ingredients:

Walnuts
Sugar  (You can use rock sugar, white sugar, or brown sugar for this recipe.)
Sesame seeds

Directions:

1.  Since my walnuts are uncracked, I have to crack them first.

Note:  Do not fret if you don't have a nutcracker~  My co-worker taught me how to crack them without one.  Nevertheless, I still recommend using a proper nutcracker...

2.  Soaked the cracked walnuts in hot water.  Peel the walnut skin with a toothpick.

Don't under estimate this process, I had to do it over 2 nights.

Note:  It's better to do this step by batch as it's very difficult to get rid of the skin once the walnut cools.

3.  Fried the walnut in the cooking oil until it's light golden brown.

4.  Dissolve some rock sugar with a small amount of water in a sauteed pan / wok.

the thicker the solution the better
you want to use the least amount of time to coat the sugar on the fried walnuts
remember, you want your walnuts to be crunchy!

5.  Coat the fried walnuts in the solution

6.  Sprinkle sesame seed.