Pine nuts - Which ones are safe?

The piñon nuts that people eat in the southwest are pretty different from the Italian variety. They come from a variety of indigenous pine species.

I’m going to have to do a blind taste test.

Most of the non-Pinus-pinea nuts are so much larger that a blind taste would require chopping or grinding them. Usually the pine flavor is so much stronger that it would be obvious.

The ones shipped from China that superficially look like Pinus pinea don’t have much flavor to me.

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Forget it, Jake. It’s Chinatown.

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Thanks for the suggestion on almonds, but I had already made almond amaretti a couple of days before, and they had left me missing the pine nuts flavors.

Ended up making pistachio amaretti. They were ok, but I need to work on the recipe.

For anybody that’s following this thread, I went by a great Italian grocer today to see if they had a good selection of pine nuts.
Laurenzo’s in North Miami. Unfortunately, they only had two kinds available–one sold in small bottles labeled from China, and the other in plastic cases apparently packed by the store (or the distributor) that did not say what the country of origin was.

Could I back up to the OP? I don’t think anyone asked this. The word “safe.” Are any of them proven UNsafe?

“Unsafe” = risk of pine mouth.

Great. Thanks. So not “unsafe.” Just unpleaasant…for some people.

Having all your food taste wrong for a couple of weeks seems beyond unpleasant. The sense of taste helps us avoid poisons and spoiled food. People suffering from it don’t even want to drink water.

Whether it’s some people or some species of pine or a combination remains uncertain.

Since my previous post, I checked out 3 more Italian specialty grocers–up in Broward County. All made in China.

It does occur to me that since the topic doesn’t seem to have come up much in social media or the news recently, maybe the currently circulating Chinese imports are not affected.

If pine nut syndrome was as some have hypothesized specific to Pinus armandii, the Chinese producers may have stopped including that species.

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… for the time being, anyway.