Belize Treasures - Cashew Apples

Did you know this is how cashews grow? I didn't, until we learned this in Belize a few weeks ago.

Cashew trees are large tropical trees that stay green all year around. The nut itself forms at the bottom of what becomes a much larger "cashew apple" (FIRST AND SECOND PHOTOS). I know... it looks like a pear, but they call it a cashew apple. Anyway, when these cashew apples are ripe, like the one in the first photo, they are amazingly delicious! Unique and very sweet. Unfortunately, they do not store well, and therefore they do not travel well. So, they cannot be shipped for wide distribution. Basically, if you want to eat a cashew apple, you have to get it straight from the tree in the tropics and eat it on the spot. Which I did. Yum!

The cashew nut many of us are familiar with is inside the small, curved shell protruding from the bottom of the cashew apple. But that green covering over the nut contain an acid that can really irritate your skin (not if you just touch it, but if you dig into it to try to get to the nut). To remove the toxin, workers pull the nut from the cashew apple, roast or steam them, then crack open the hard shell and remove the edible nut. It's an intensive process, which explains why cashews are kind of expensive.

The THIRD AND FOURTH PHOTOS show different stages of development. You can see that the nut forms first (ants seem to like this stage), then the stem above the nut expands to become the delectable cashew apple.

Photos by Stan C. Smith