Cracking taste of autumn: in praise of the hazelnut

It started with an ice cream flavour. Noisette, it said, next to a picture of a little brown nut I had never seen. One scoop and that was it. The hazelnut had a flavour of its own, nothing like the almond praline swirls of a Californian childhood. I can still almost taste it.

The other nut of my youth came in a jar, smooth or crunchy, smeared on soft white bread and topped with something sweet and purple. By age 12 I was probably 80% peanut butter and jelly. Hazelnuts weren’t part of the story; they weren’t even conceivable.

Then I moved to France, where hazelnuts are everywhere. Ground into cakes. Pressed into a golden-green oil. Toasted and sprinkled over salad leaves. Lending crunch to terrines. And don’t get me started on that chocolate spread; it barely existed in the US when I was a kid.

In late summer, I start seeing bins of whole hazelnuts in their shells at the markets. These are economical and keep well if stored in a cool, dry place, but they are labour-intensive for the cook. 

Different ways to prepare hazelnuts 

For a small batch, under a kilo, use a nutcracker on them. A hammer or mallet also works: wrap a small bunch in a tea towel and place on a cutting board, then give it a firm, controlled tap. Too much force will crush the nut along with the shell.

It is much easier to buy them raw and shelled (called décortiquées). These are best roasted; this enhances the flavour and also helps remove the papery brown skin. 

Arrange the nuts in a single layer on a baking tray and put in an oven heated to 180°C for 10-15 minutes; check and stir halfway through. Remove and wrap them in a clean kitchen towel. Let cool, then rub vigorously and most of the skins will flake off.

Once you have the roasted nuts, they are excellent coarsely chopped and sprinkled on green salads with goat’s cheese or a blue-veined cheese. 

They pair well with lentils too; sprinkle some on top of a salad of lentils with roasted carrots and beetroot, served with a creamy dressing.

For baking, the supermarket will have what you need: blanched, chopped, sliced and ground hazelnuts, and hazelnut extract, like vanilla. My favourite is hazelnut praline, whether powdered or chopped, which is great for adding to basic sweet baking recipes such as cookies, cakes or sweet pastry for extra hazelnut-iness. Flour is harder to come by; try specialist suppliers at markets or online, or a good health food shop.

Oil is worth seeking out, but buy it in small quantities: like all nut oils, it turns rancid quickly, so choose cold-pressed and use it up. A spoonful in partnership with a neutral oil in a salad dressing adds a pleasing hazelnut touch, though go carefully; the taste is powerful. 

Alternatively, drizzle sparingly over green beans, roasted squash or braised red cabbage, with a few coarsely chopped nuts thrown on top too. Think of hazelnut oil as a seasoning and keep it off the heat because it turns bitter when cooked.

Challengers for hazelnut growers

For all that the hazelnut brings to French cooking, the people who grow it have a tough job. In 2024, Unicoque, the cooperative behind almost all of France’s crop, lost about half its harvest to weevil and stink bug infestations. Growers want access to a banned insecticide to fight them; a law reauthorising the chemical passed in 2025, only to be struck down by the Constitutional Council.

France has never been a major producer. Commercial hazelnut orchards began in the 1970s, in one small corner of the southwest, and the country still grows just 5% of the hazelnuts it consumes. 

The rest is imported, mostly from Turkey and Italy, where hazelnuts have been farmed at scale for far longer. But the nut is still there when you go looking, especially in the southwest.

Recipe: Hazelnut fruit tart

These days there’s always hazelnut in my kitchen in some form: oil for dressings, flour for cakes, a jar of pâte de noisette for when I want the taste straight. 

In the southwest, where I live, I am lucky to be near Maison Carayon, a hazelnut producer with an excellent range of products.

Fresh hazelnuts have a short season, from late summer into autumn. They’re worth catching while they’re here.

For this hazelnut tart recipe, juicy fruit works best so it goes jammy in the oven’s heat. I like strawberries, but this is also good with raspberries, blueberries and small pieces of ripe pears, plums or apricots.

Ingredients:

• Fruit of choice, one punnet for larger fruits and two for small

• 120g of butter

• 120g of sugar

• 1 egg

• 1tsp of vanilla extract

• 120g of ground hazelnuts

• Chopped hazelnuts for decoration (optional) 

• 2tbsp of flour

• A pinch of salt

• One roll of sweet pastry, either shop-bought or homemade

Method:

1. Preheat the oven to 180C. Start with a 22–24cm round tart tin, line with sweet pastry and bake blind.

2. Using a mixer, beat the butter and sugar on high until light and fluffy. Beat in the egg and vanilla extract. With a spatula, stir in the ground hazelnuts, flour and a pinch of salt.

3. Spread the hazelnut mixture in the cooled pastry case. Arrange the fruit on top and push it down slightly. Smaller fruits can be kept whole while larger fruits will need sliced. You can also add chopped hazelnuts.

4. Cover with foil. Bake for 20 minutes, then remove the foil and continue baking until the filling is puffed and golden, 15–20 minutes more.

5. Serve warm or at room temperature.