With abundant raw materials and rich nutrient content, cashew apples are increasingly being paid more attention. Instead of just harvesting the seeds and then discarding the fruit, which causes a lot of waste in resources, many people are trying to get the most out of this potential fruit. Thus, products like canned cashews, candy, cashew jams or cashew vinegar were made.
Canned cashews
Use only fresh, firm fruits for canning.
First, boil the fruit in 0.5% sodium hydroxide solution for 3-4 minutes, peel and wash with water. Then, boil in 0.2N sulfuric acid (H2SO4) solution for 4 minutes, wash cashew apple with water again, steam at 2kg pressure for about 4 minutes and then cool cashew apple under water jets. After draining all the juice, cut in half lengthwise, make the fruit beautiful again, and then canned with the syrup 40 degrees B. Finally, place the can in boiling water (or steam), suck the air out of the box for 4 - 5 minutes, autoclave the cans in steam at 4 kg pressure for 1/2 hour for pasteurization (Jain et al., 1954).
Mixing pineapple slices with cashews in the ratio 1:1 is a delicious salad.
Some canned vegetables are made from the combination of cashews and other fruits: Unripe cashews are combined with potatoes in a 1:1 ratio or with both potatoes and tomatoes in a ratio of 2:1, maybe with or without the addition of tamarind.
Some pickles from cashews: Steam the unripe cashews as directed, wash them thoroughly, and then soak them in a 10% salt solution for 1 week. Next, halve the cashew apple lengthwise, cut off the damaged parts, and then pickle it as usual (Jain et al., 1954).
Cashew candies and jams
Select ripe and undamaged cashews, soak them in 2% salt solution. Then, gradually increase the salt concentration in the solution to 10% (about 5-6 days). Next, steam the cashews with steam at a pressure of 2 - 4 kg for 5 - 10 minutes. Next, use a concentrated syrup with a concentration of 30 degrees B (containing 0.05% citric acid) to make cashew candies (similar to the popular production of pine candies) (Jain et al., 1954).
Cashews are also used to make cashew jams and mixed jams.
Picture - A cashew jam product in Africa
To make jam, after being soaked in 2% salt solution for 3 days, steam at 4-6 kg for 10-15 minutes. Before the cooling process is finished, add an amount of sugar (equal to the weight of cashews) and a quantity of 0.3% citric acid, we will get cashew jam. Using the above processing method for a mixture of cashew meat and banana or pineapple meat at a ratio of 1:1 will obtain a mixed jam product.
There are 5 types of jam made from cashews in Brazil:
(1) fruit stewed in syrup (doce emcalda)
(2) candies with the consistency of jam (doce)
(3) the fruit pulp is frozen, coated with sugar (caju cristalizado)
(4) the fruit is cooked and partially dried in syrup (caju ameixa)
(5) agar
When brought to the factory, cashews need to be processed within a few hours. In Brazil, the bottled cashew product is sold to tourists widely. Simply, remove the seed and put the stalk into the bottle as soon as the cashew nut is small so that the stalk grows into a cashew nut. After, when the fruit is ripe and fall, add cane wine to the bottle (Johnson, 1977).
Vinegar fruit
Satyavithi et al., 1963 invented cashew fruit vinegar as follows: The cashew fruit juice with a concentration of 12 degrees B (in case the required concentration is not enough, sugar can be added to it) was pasteurized, then cool, and culture pure yeast Saccharomyces cervisiae, or brewer's yeast in juice in order to cause alcoholic fermentation. Add 0.05% ammonium phosphate to aid fermentation. Vinegar fermentation can be done by "slow process" or "fast process".
Particularly, with "slow process", yeast or mix with 1/3 mass of vinegar (unpasteurized vinegar) and let stand until vinegar is formed. With the "fast process", the juice mixed with yeast and vinegar passes through a column filled with cobs with a height of 1.3 - 1.7m. This vinegar is filtered and pasteurized.
Vinegar produced by the above processes has the acidity above 5.3% (equivalent to the acidity of commercial vinegar).
Reference
Thanh P. D. (2003). Cashew Nuts - Production and Processing.
