Pecans May Help Lower Cholesterol, So Go Ahead And Enjoy Them In A Pie

Like pine nuts in Italian cooking, pecans are the nuts that define Southern cooking.

Pecan pie. Sweet potato casserole strewn with pecans. Salty bowls of roasted pecans at polite parties.

Why, without pecans, a praline would be just a pile of cooked sugar.

But pecans travel in wide circles. They may be native to the South, but they’ve migrated. They can muscle aside the walnuts in a Waldorf salad. They can even replace those pricey pine nuts in a pesto.

The fresh crop falls from trees through late fall so there’s no better time to go nuts over pecans.

Pecan lovers have good reason to come out of their shells: Health. While pecans have always been considered a good source of vitamins and minerals, like vitamin A, vitamin E, folic acid and potassium, they were also maligned as being high in fat. But not all fat is bad, and a study released earlier this year found that pecans may help lower cholesterol.

Nutritionists at New Mexico State University found that in a study of people with normal cholesterol, the ones who ate cup of pecans a day, out of hand or in recipes, lowered their total cholesterol and their LDL cholesterol - the so-called “bad” cholesterol - by 10 percent.

Before you rush right out and grab a bag of pecans, look for the good ones. That fat may lower cholesterol but it makes pecans susceptible to turning rancid. Until after Thanksgiving, the nuts you see on some markets probably came from last year’s crop, a fact that drives a grower like Bill Bunn a little nuts.

“Fresh crops, which will be in stores after Thanksgiving, are better,” he says.

“Look for a bright yellow finish to the nut, true halves, not splits, and not a lot of grit or grime or bark in the bottom of the bag. Mostly, though, look for the color. If they’re rancid, they’ll discolor.”

Once you get them, use them right away. Or freeze them, shelled or not. Shelled pecans can keep six months in the freezer.

Classic Pecan Pie

Although we think of pecan pie as being an old tradition, it really became widely popular after World War II. There are many versions, but most versions include corn syrup and at least 3 eggs. You can use chopped pecans, but we like using halves for the biggest pecan flavor. This came from the Georgia Department of Agriculture.

3 eggs

1 cup sugar

1 cup light corn syrup

2 tablespoons butter or margarine, melted and cooled

1 teaspoon vanilla extract

2 cups pecan halves, divided

1 (9-inch) unbaked deep-dish pie shell

Preheat oven to 350 degrees. In a mixing bowl, beat eggs lightly with a whisk or fork. Add sugar, corn syrup, melted butter and vanilla and stir until well combined. Fold in 1-1/2 cups pecans. Pour the mixture into the pie shell, smoothing out top so pecans are evenly distributed. Place remaining 1/2 cup pecan halves around top of pie in a decorative pattern.

Carefully place the pie in the oven and bake until a deep nut brown color and a knife inserted in the center of the pie comes out clean, 50 to 55 minutes. Remove the pie from the oven to cool for 30 minutes before slicing. Refrigerate until ready to serve.

Yield: Makes 8 servings.