a textured red background with nuts layered on top of nuts and coconuts, walnuts, and pistachios visible
What is the best nut? (Image: The Spinoff)

KaiDecember 23, 2024

Pretty much every common nut in Aotearoa, reviewed and ranked

Contributing writer
a textured red background with nuts layered on top of nuts and coconuts, walnuts, and pistachios visible
What is the best nut? (Image: The Spinoff)

Summer reissue: At long last, The Spinoff shells out for a nut ranking.  

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It recently came to The Spinoff’s attention that while we had ranked the beans of the world not once but twice, we had never ranked nuts. Nuts are an extremely glorious type of food, enjoyed by people around the world of all dietary persuasions. They contain lots of nutrition, and they’re also very versatile in sweet and savoury meals alike. 

There is a lot of debate about nuts on the internet: it’s impossible to mention peanuts without some enterprising pedant popping out of the bushes to say that actually, peanuts are a legume. According to botanists (who would know), nuts are a type of fruit made up of a hard shell surrounding a single seed.  But technically many other so-called nuts are not really nuts, including coconuts, almonds and cashews. 

Instead they are “drupes”, meaning they have a fleshy outside, and a shell covering a seed on the inside. There’s also the case of pine nuts, which are technically a seed (since there are lots of them inside a single pinecone, not just one). With that in mind, this ranking includes seeds that grow directly on plants and are considered or called nuts and/or have “nut” as part of their name, and are readily available in New Zealand. 

There are a number of items with names that include the word “nut” that don’t otherwise meet this definition.

Other kinds of nuts, sadly excluded from selection:  

Nuts and bolts: Very useful, probably prevent several of the items in your life you use most from falling apart. Crunchy, but should not be eaten. 

Gingernuts: Also very useful, and can, like nuts and bolts, be used in a workshop – maybe as an anvil, or the surface of a very small stool? Crunchy, can be eaten. 

Doughnuts: They’re made of dough, obviously, but are they called nuts because they come in a range of sizes and shapes, are often brown and white, and are full of oil? Usually not crunchy, can be eaten. 

Tongan fried ball doughnuts
Keke ‘isite, Tongan fried ball doughnuts (Photo: Sela Jane Hopgood)

Knut the Great/Cnut the Great/Canute the Great: Ruled England, Norway and Denmark, AKA a busy man. Descended from the excellently named Harald Bluetooth, Knut’s father Svein Forkbeard defeated Saxon king Aethelred the Unready (maybe because Aethelred was unready?). When Forkbeard died, Aethelred took the throne again, while Knut rallied his forces in Denmark, waited for various people to die, then took over England again and married Aethelred’s widow. He ended up governing a large part of northern Europe and died in 1035. Couldn’t hold back the tide. Not crunchy (as far as we know), can’t be eaten (because he has been dead for a millennium).  

Before we launch into the ranking proper, let us first begin with a moment of silence for people who are allergic to nuts.

13. Chestnut

Chestnuts are so deceptive with their spiky layer concealing a smooth interior and are exciting to grow or forage. However, they’re not very widespread in Aotearoa because they don’t stay fresh for long and their pellicle (the thin brown coating) doesn’t peel off easily. Making them taste good is even harder – they need lots of roasting because they’re quite astringent when raw, and often end up being pulverised into flour or covered with sugar, concealing their nutty origin. It’s been a while since I had a great roast chestnut, and I would like to try more in the future to see if their ranking can be improved. 

chestnuts in their furry hoary shell looking brown and round and glossy
Chestnuts are fascinating to look at, but less exciting to eat (Photo: Getty Images)

12. Brazil nut

The problem with this South American nut is that it simply doesn’t taste good enough to make it worth its big size. I don’t want to have to take multiple bites of a nut, or feel that I have to open my mouth wide enough to expose my tonsils to the breeze just to take a bite. Yes, Brazil nuts have lots of selenium, an essential micronutrient that is low in New Zealand soils, but a single nut contains plenty, making it easy to overdose. They take so long to chew that they’re more like a meal than a snack. 

11. Nutmeg

Nutmeg gets lots of points for being pretty on the inside, and also pulling double duty – the spice mace is derived from its exterior. Mostly grown in Indonesia’s Banda Islands with a nasty colonial history, nutmeg also loses points for its speckled interior describing a liver disease. However, it is not last on this list because a) it’s fun to grate, b) its scent evokes spicy memories of Christmastime and c) it’s excellent value for money – one or two nutmeg kernels can last you absolutely ages.  

10. Hazelnut

Hazelnuts are one of the few entries on this list that are botanically true nuts, but I fear Nutella has led us astray on this one. Hazelnuts are fine toasted, a little sweet and creamy, and it’s lovely that, unlike some of the other nuts, they’re grown in New Zealand. But while they’re OK with other things – sprinkled over a salad or concealed with lots of chocolate and oil and sugar – they lack the true greatness that characterises some of the other nuts on this list. 

9. Almond 

Almonds, like hazelnuts, are very good in the right context, like being smothered in wasabi and sugar. Almond flour is a good option to add to your baking if you’re sure it won’t encounter anyone with a nut allergy and you want to feel fancy, and almond milk is a mid-tier plant-based milk. But almonds on their own are just a bit too plain, and enjoying the almond butter your flatmates gave you for your birthday has to be tempered with the knowledge that most almonds are grown in California, where climate change and water shortages are threatening the future of the lucrative crop. 

A tino rangatiratanga flag coming out of some macadamia nuts.
Macadamias can be grown in New Zealand (Photos: Getty Images / Design: Tina Tiller)

8. Macadamia

Macadamias have a slightly scaled-down version of the issue that Brazil nuts also suffer from: a single sphere is too big, a half is too small. In general, macadamias are just a little too smooth: even almonds have some pleasing subtle corrugation, but macadamias are just creamy. That means they’re well suited to being covered in chocolate, but can’t stand on their own like other nuts. 

7. Pecan

I have had pecan pie exactly once – I remember it being very nice but that might just have been the sugar and butter –  and nibbling on a few pecans in the years since hasn’t left a particularly strong impression. But I asked bona fide American Liv Sisson, The Spinoff’s commercial editor, who describes the nut as “god tier”, to give me the pitch on why pecans are important: 

You can disagree on pronunciation, but you can’t disagree with this: the pecan is the best nut. They are god tier. And they’re not some legume interloper, they are a real nut. Pecans are buttery and sweet with an ineffable mouth feel – crunchy then somehow immediately stuck in your teeth in a nice way is the best I can do. Cinnamon scrolls, pancakes, bougie muesli, fancy nut mix – all of these would fall over as culinary concepts without the pecan. Duck Island’s butter pecan ice cream is the best flavour by proxy but that’s another ranking. Pecans are homely, they have granny energy, but they’re also mysterious. They are mast fruiters and only fruit in some years, but always in sync as a group. How? Science is still unsure. I could write more about this but I won’t, because Robin Wall Kimmerer already wrote a perfect pecan essay: Council of the Pecans.

The only thing I have to add to this is that hearing Robin Wall Kimmerer pronounce pecan in the Braiding Sweetgrass audiobook really reveals what poetry the word’s two simple syllables contain. Pecans were essential to indigenous Cherokees’ survival after being forced to move by colonisers in the 19th century, which is now known as the Trail of Tears.

a man with an apron holdinga pine gone and a tray full of nuts
Canterbury chef Giulio Sturla extracting pine nuts from (gasp) a pinecone (Photo: Alex Casey)

6. Pine nut 

We’ve now reached the part of the list where every single one of the nuts that features is great, and each could make an argument for why they deserve to be at the top. Pine nuts are the smallest nut on this list, and their tidy size and teardrop shape is very appealing. Pesto is great, the creaminess is tempered by a slightly smoky, almost bitter quality that reminds you they come from pungent trees. I like how they can hide in food until you almost don’t notice them but their high price makes them something I only ever experience in small doses. 

5. Cashew

This is a bad time for me to be ranking cashews, which would normally be a top-three nut for me based purely on taste. The pros are: it is a foundation for extremely great vegan cheese, you can add a handful to saucy stir fries or saffron and pea rice or kheer or your mouth, it looks very freaky when it grows. Cons: Thinking about the cashew fruit makes me feel extremely sad that I have never been able to try a cashew apple, there are a lot of labour issues in the cashew process (workers are exposed to acid from the shells when husking the nuts).

These cons are also trumped by the fact that last week I ate way too many chilli and lime cashews from the supermarket and sadly concluded that the more they’re crusted in roast garlic extract, chilli powder, dextrose and sugar, the less appealing they are. I anticipate feeling quite disgusted by the concept of cashews for the next two weeks, at which point I will recover and return to previous rates of consumption. 

Sorry to cashews, it came down to arbitrary factors at the end of the day, but at least this nut put its best foot forward. 

4. Walnut

Of all the nuts, walnuts have the most beautiful shape. They’re so wrinkly, and then their flaky skin means that biting into one is like biting into a pastry. If this ranking was based simply on “best taste when raw”, walnuts would be at the top of the list. If this ranking was based on “best taste when pickled”, walnuts would win as well, simply because I can’t imagine a perfect sandwich that doesn’t have pickled walnuts in it. However, this ranking is for all around nut success, so taking into account all categories (versatility, looks, use in salads, size etc), walnuts can only come fourth.

Walnuts are best enjoyed socially, in their shells: gather all your friends and family to poke holes in the unripe walnuts (if you are pickling them) or to crack open the shells and admire the art within. (Competition idea: with a minute each with a mortar and pestle, a hammer, bare hands and a nutcracker, race your friends and family to see who can crack the most nuts in four minutes. It’s the all-around award for nut cracking!) 

a zigzaggy background with a coconut and chef's kiss
Photos: Getty Images / Design: Tina Tiller

3. Coconut

For starters: coconuts are not true nuts but neither are most of the other nuts on this list and they still meet the criteria to be counted. 

Coconuts are right up there with walnuts in the “most delicious raw” category. Forget their injury rates and consider the coconut. What a nut! Delicious and useful at every stage of its life. Its husks can be made into charcoal; its oil is wonderful on toast and also can make your hair very shiny, its water is about as hydrating as a sports drink without all the sugar and plastic. While its astonishing versatility is amazing, I’m concerned that many people haven’t experienced coconut in its best form, plump and juicy out of the shell. The problem is the context: a coconut that just fell out of the tree is wonderful, but dried, desiccated coconut brings down the reputation of the fruit. 

2. Peanut

When I was 12 I decided that my favourite food was toast, not just because I liked toast (although I did really like toast and still do) but because I figured it made sense to have a favourite food that you got to eat every day. Choosing peanuts as the second-best nut is a bit like that: they are in so many kinds of food that you could eat The Spinoff’s second-best type of nut in every meal if you wanted. Peanut butter on toast is an excellent vegan breakfast, peanuts sprinkled over noodles for lunch (and maybe topped with peanut oil), roasted chilli peanuts as an afternoon snack, peanut sauce could accompany kung pao cauliflower for dinner. 

I’ve had delicious boiled peanuts in South India still soft in their shells, stuffed peanutty handfuls of scroggin into my mouth in the New Zealand mountains, eaten peanut-filled pad thai from roadside stalls in Thailand and concluded that peanuts are perfect in a variety of contexts as well as foodstuffs. Also, while we’re here: crunchy peanut butter is the best kind. 

More Spinoff Food Rankings

The Spinoff ranks beans, part one

The Spinoff ranks beans, part two

The Spinoff’s ranking of every dairy lolly, every chip flavour, every fast food outlet’s fries, mini Easter eggs, ice block flavours 

1. Pistachio

Pistachios may seem like a left-field choice for Best Nut, but consider:

  • They are green with yellow and pink bits (intriguing). 
  • They are in kulfi, one of the world’s best kinds of ice cream. 
  • They are mostly presented still in their shells, but their shells are very easy to crack. 

Pistachio shells are incredibly entertaining, providing an audio experience (and any number of pistachio-themed ASMR videos). The shells also lead to the optimal nut consumption experience: you are simply forced to eat them one at a time, making the experience more mindful, and also meaning you have to spend more time with each nut, contemplating its superiority (its high ranking might be the product of this sort of Stockholm syndrome of nuts).

They don’t need to be ground into butter; they don’t need to be slathered in starchy chilli seasoning; they don’t need to be opened with a hammer, or used in cough syrup or mixed with chocolate to show their full potential. They shine when they are simply salted and roasted, the perfect match of form, colour, texture, size and flavour. It’s very obvious: pistachios are the best nut.

First published August 18, 2024.

Keep going!
A bubble tea shop on Dominion Road. (Photo: Gabi Lardies).
A bubble tea shop on Dominion Road. (Photo: Gabi Lardies).

KaiDecember 20, 2024

‘Just like the pie’: Bubble tea is here to stay

Staff writer
A bubble tea shop on Dominion Road. (Photo: Gabi Lardies).
A bubble tea shop on Dominion Road. (Photo: Gabi Lardies).

Bubble tea has taken the world, and New Zealand, by storm. But where did it come from and is it here to stay?

At 5pm on a sunny evening on Dominion Road, the retail shops have closed and the restaurants have yet to start doling out their saucy noodles and plump dumplings. It’s a Tuesday and foot traffic is thin, but on the pavement in front of HuluCat, four people are waiting. A Pākehā mother-daughter duo are called up to the counter window first. They’ve ordered two strawberry milk teas with black boba, a cream cheese black tea also with boba, and a peach green tea with no toppings. 

The daughter grabs three thick straws from the stainless steel container, and bundles three of the sealed cups in her hands. Her mum grabs the remaining strawberry milk tea. HuluCat is really just a hole in the wall – a big open window with a counter, and beyond that one or two staff members who zip around grabbing plastic cups from the towers on the right, filling them with tea, milk, flavours, ice and toppings on the left, shaking them, and then sealing them up by the window where they’re collected. Next up are two fruit slushies for the grey-haired Pasifika lady, and then an original milk tea with pearls, in a paper bag, for the tween boy on his bike. 

HuluCat on Dominion Road. (Photo: Gabi Lardies).

Across the road, Tea Talk is also serving cold bubble teas from a counter window. If you walk just two blocks through the shops you’ll encounter another five specialty bubble tea shops, and see that many of the restaurants have added laminated signs on their windows, hawking their own versions of the cold drinks. Granted, this is Dominion Road, an epicentre of Asian food in New Zealand, but Google shows 18 bubble tea shops in Auckland’s CBD, and one in just about every major mall, city and town throughout New Zealand – even Invercargill. Bubble tea, the insanely popular Taiwanese drink, has taken New Zealand, and the world, by storm. 

Bubble tea, also called Boba or Pearl tea, is defined by the chewy cherry-sized tapioca balls which are sucked up through an extra thick straw. They don’t have much flavour – texture, or mouthfeel, is an important consideration in Taiwanese cuisine. While chewy desserts have been a fixture on the island for generations, bubble tea is relatively new. It was invented in the 1980s, amidst an economic boom and a cultural feeling that society was transitioning from old to new. Bubble tea became so popular that many Taiwanese people took to drinking it everyday. It then spread throughout Asia and then the rest of the world, first through diaspora populations. In 2014, bubble tea boomed in western culture, particularly North America. The global industry has grown into a global industry valued at US$2.4–3.6 billion with no signs of slowing down. In his last interview with CNN, one of the two claimants to the invention of bubble tea Tu Tsung-ho, said that bubble tea “introduces the world to Taiwan.”

HuluCat’s three most popular teas: Original Milk Tea, Taro Milk Tea and Brown Sugar Fresh Milk, all with black pearls. (Photo: Jin Fellet).

In New Zealand, the first bubble teas started appearing in the 90s. Manying Ip, professor emeritus at the school of Asian studies at the University of Auckland, says the first shops would likely have been started by Taiwanese immigrants who arrived after New Zealand’s immigration changes in 1987. The Immigration Act 1987 aimed to eliminate discrimination against some races and nationalities, and preference for others. In the late 1800s, restrictions now widely seen as prejudiced were placed on the entry of Asian people. It wasn’t until 1974 that the criteria for entry began to change from race or nationality to merit and skills, attracting migration from Asia. Bubble tea is among the many delicious foods that migrants have taken with them around the world.

Ip remembers one of the first shops popped up in Newmarket, “around where the trendy people go”. The shop wasn’t like the colourful Instagram-friendly versions of today, which offer seemingly endless menu items and variations. It only sold one type of tea, the classic bubble milk tea with black boba. It would have been called pearl milk tea rather than bubble tea.

Now there’s hundreds of flavours of bubble tea: brewed tea like oolong or rose, fruity flavours like grape or lime slushies, tea lattes like winter melon latte or caramel latte, specialty flavours like lychee yogurt green tea and even dessert teas which feature rice or red bean. Once you’ve picked from the long list of flavour options, you can add toppings. Beyond the traditional tapioca pearls, there’s agar pearls, taro balls, coffee jelly, peach gum, chia seeds, cream cheese, honey aloe, egg pudding and grass jelly – to name just a few. The levels of sugar and ice are customisable and usually laid out in percentages. An order is so customisable that it’s a small feat of self-actualisation and no surprise that a slew of personality tests along the lines of “which bubble tea are you?” have cropped up. 

A tea can set you back between $8 and $18 – the more toppings the more the cost. Once it’s handed over in the big, plastic, sealed cups, another ritual begins. If you’ve got toppings, choose the thick straw, two sizes are usually available on the counter. If the toppings are jelly, shake the drink up so the pieces break up. The straw is used to stab through the seal on the top. Toppings must be carefully rationed throughout the drink so that when you’re done, none are left on dry land. If they are, they must be sucked up with air.

A Milk Taro Tea and the two straw options at HuluCat on Dominion Road. (Photo: Gabi Lardies).

Ip can’t remember the name of that early pearl milk tea shop or its owner, only that she was a Taiwanese immigrant who was in the Hwa Hsia Society, which was big at the time and continues to this day. The society sprung up in 1989 when the thousands of Taiwanese people who had migrated here under the new Act realised the importance of unity and community. Today, one of the stated aims of the organisation is to promote social, cultural and educational exchange between Taiwanese New Zealanders and other New Zealanders. Though it could be viewed as simply a sugary cold drink, bubble tea also seems to fit this aim.

The current generation of bubble tea shops tend to be franchises run by young, educated and social media savvy entrepreneurs. The shops are designed with social media in mind – logos are large, the lighting is bright, there’s Instagram-friendly decor and aesthetics, and the drinks themselves are bright, colourful, constantly re-invented and served in clear cups. The people behind the counter making the endless varieties of bubble tea are young staff, working at fast speeds as customers take their orders away.

In 2003, a duo who grew up in Taiwan, immersed in milk tea culture, and moved to New Zealand for high school, started a cat themed bubble tea shop on Auckland’s Anzac Avenue. The first HuluCat Tea House was a big cozy space with comfy places to sit and lounge. It had board games, was open till midnight and also served cheese toasties. The combination proved very popular. Young people and university students loved hanging out or studying there.

HuluCat’s first menu from 2003. (Photo: Supplied).

Yu-Fan Lin (also known as Darcy Lin), a spokesperson for the company, says that at first, most of the customers were from the Chinese community. Its wider popularity was a gradual process: young people were first, while “older locals were initially hesitant,” she says. The owners of HuluCat were determined – they developed new flavours to appeal to different tastes, and focused on providing a friendly atmosphere. The customer base expanded “step by step,” says Lin. Now, many different New Zealanders enjoy bubble tea regularly – families, office workers, people from across Oceania, Māori and Pākehā.

Over time HuluCat grew and became a local franchise. Currently there are seven stores across Auckland. At the same time, as the popularity of bubble tea took off in the western world, other bubble tea brands arrived from overseas or sprung up here. The global mammoth Gong Cha arrived in New Zealand in 2015, 12 years after the first HuluCat. It has grown exponentially, and now has 30 stores nationwide. There’s also Yi Fang, Tea Talk, Wucha lounge, Cha Time, TwenTea and countless others. HuluCat remains the local stalwart, over its 20-year history, Lin says she’s seen bubble tea become “a beloved treat enjoyed by many”. In her eyes, “bubble tea is definitely here to stay.”

Cha+ tea shop on Dominion Road. (Photo: Gabi Lardies).

Manying Ip first noticed how appealing bubble tea could be to New Zealanders at one of the Auckland Lantern Festivals held in Albert Park in the 90s. Her Pākehā friend bought bubble tea from a vendor there for $6. “It was a lot of money, but then he really enjoyed it.” She thinks it’s one of those things that catches on, particularly with young people, because it’s a “fusion thing, between east and west”. She thinks its rise here reflects a happy bridging of cultures. There’s also the simple material things. It’s yum and quite filling, so it’s not surprising that it has become popular – “it’s just like the pie, you know?”

Back on Dominion Road, the sun is setting and the neon lights have turned on. Groups of people cluster around bubble tea shops. Some have come in pajamas, others with bellies full of food from the restaurants next door. Parents hold the hands of their little ones and help them order a little treat for the evening. Though it was born in Taiwan, bubble tea is now part of New Zealand.

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