Head to the Southwest to forage for the world’s second most expensive nut and explore the Indigenous food cultures that revolve around it.
Candace Samora waits for the leaves to change each autumn before embarking on her family’s centuries-old tradition of gathering piñon nuts. “My dad’s side is a mix of Hispanic and Pascua Yaqui,” she says. “My mom’s family is Navajo, and she still lives on the reservation where there are groves of piñon trees. The season’s tradition was passed on to me by both of my parents since the piñon is found in Colorado and Utah,” explains Samora. Growing up in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado, Samora was surrounded by the piñon tree and its delicacy — the piñon nut, the world’s second most expensive nut, outpriced only by the macadamia.
Foraged for millennia, the piñon nut has a distinct rich pine and buttery flavor and is loaded in protein and vitamins. Only found in the Southwest, the piñon’s native range — woodlands where the piñon is the major pine species — covers about 40 million acres ranging over Arizona, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, with some additional outlying acreage in California, Oklahoma, Texas, and Wyoming. The piñon pine’s relative, the Mediterranean pine tree, is the predominant tree that provides the world’s harvest of pine nuts, making piñon nuts an even pricier rarity. The nuts are actually seeds, and retrieving them is a somewhat delicate process that tries to avoid damaging the soft exterior. “We usually crack them open with our teeth, like a pistachio,” Samora says. Others use a rolling pin to crack the casing.
Candace Samora holds a bowl of piñon nuts she harvested by hand in the Roaring Fork Valley of Colorado (PHOTOGRAPHY: Julie Bielenberg).
Adding to their novelty and rarity, piñon nuts only form every five to seven years within the cones, and the timing for collection each year is a short window. “I go with my uncle and father in the high country at peak collection time to forage,” Samora says. “They put their arms around the bases of the piñon trees and shake them until the nuts and cones fall. We leave a tarp under the tree to collect the pine cones and then gather them up and take them home to let them dry out and release the pine nuts more easily.” The pine seed is then consumed in many forms — the most popular is simply roasted. “We always make sure to get enough pine cones to have a couple of bowls of roasted nuts for each family member,” Samora adds. “Our family just likes them roasted; other relatives use the nuts for baking pancakes and cupcakes.”
One bowlful of prized piñon nuts can cost $30 to $65 or more a pound.
In New Mexico, the world’s piñon capital, where it’s even the official state tree, there’s a delicious diversity of piñon cuisine. At the Indian Pueblo Kitchen in Albuquerque, which is owned and operated by New Mexico’s 19 Pueblo communities, a breakfast and lunch menu of traditional heritage dishes has been curated to represent each of the Pueblos. “Piñon has been used as a source of food by Native Americans for thousands of years,” says Indian Pueblo Kitchen sous chef Josh Aragon. He is from the Laguna Pueblo, just outside of Albuquerque, where he, too, was taught the ancient tradition of gathering the seed. “We call it ‘Mother Nature’s milk’ because of all the incredible properties and benefits from this tiny edible resource. It’s one of the ingredients in our Native Superfood Waffles and Griddle Cakes that makes them so unique.”
Harvesting piñon pine cones from a piñon pine in Carbondale, Colorado (PHOTOGRAPHY: Chad Chisholm).
Aragon and other chefs from the Pueblos embrace the ancient tradition of piñon cuisine throughout the year at the Indian Pueblo Kitchen serving griddle cakes to both locals and tourists. Chief Operating Officer for the Indian Pueblo Cultural Center Monique Fragua (Pueblo of Jemez) explains that featuring piñons in the menu celebrates “who we are as people of this land — as hunters, farmers, and gatherers who for millenniums have used the resources from our surroundings as ingredients in our meals.” At the Indian Pueblo Kitchen, the tradition is to spread roasted piñon nuts on the hotcake just before flipping to enhance the flavor in the outer layer upon first bite.
The hotcakes blend another tradition throughout Navajo, Apache, and Pueblo cultures of mixing blue corn with the piñon. Atole, oftentimes called chaquehue or chaquewa by Puebloan communities, is a hot, creamy beverage made from blue corn, piñon, and other regional ingredients; it’s often a baby’s first food because of the nutritional value. Aragon and the chefs prepare atole at the Indian Pueblo Kitchen, but their version is a thicker, blue-corn porridge with quinoa, currants, piñon, sunflower seeds, triple berries, and toasted Pueblo bread. They also serve a piñon cola made by Zia Soda for a modern twist on the ancient flavor.
As is true throughout Native American communities, all parts of a tree or food source are valued and used. Piñon pines and their cones are notoriously sticky, even more so than maple sap. “We have to wear gloves when we gather the pine cones because it will ruin any clothing it touches and get your hair into mats,” Samora says. The sweetness of the tree’s sap has proliferated into numerous piñon desserts. Eldora Chocolate, a bean-to-bar handcrafted chocolate shop in Albuquerque, offers a zesty mango piñon chocolate bar. Nearby Santa Fe is stocked — piñon rolls, brittle, toffee, and fudge — at Señor Murphy, with four locations, including at La Fonda hotel.
Jemez Red Rocks on the Jemez Pueblo, north of Albuquerque, where visitors can hike and take in piñon-punctuated scenery along the Jemez Red Rocks Trail (PHOTOGRAPHY: Courtesy New Mexico Tourism Department).
Oftentimes, piñons simply don’t produce any pine cones, a result of moisture and temperature fluctuations. Local piñon trees stressed by multiple years of drought couldn’t produce nuts, and some makers, like Buffett’s Candies in Albuquerque, simply ran out. For now, they can’t offer their former top seller — a piñon assortment of piñon rolls, milk and dark chocolate piñon horny toads, piñon toffee, piñon creams, piñon caramels, and piñon clusters — but plan to begin production of those favorites again when the crop is sufficient.
New Mexico’s largest coffee roaster offers piñon coffee at its Albuquerque coffee houses — piñon latte, traditional piñon cold brew, piñon steamer — in addition to bagged coffee sold throughout the world. New Mexico Piñon Coffee has to forage each piñon by hand from the forest floor since no commercial piñon grove exists. It can also be used to make tea. “My aunties will make piñon tea that just uses the piñon needles that are steeped in hot water,” Samora says. “The needles are always available year-round, and it’s an easy and healthy tradition.”
But it’s the simplicity of the roasted nut that is most ingrained throughout Native cultures. “Roasted piñons are a delicious and ancient treat,” Fragua says. “As Pueblo people, we have been gathering the piñon nut since the time of our ancestors. Eating roasted piñon in front of a fire is a reminder of simpler days, days when the stories of our grandparents and freshly roasted piñon with a saltwater bath were both treated like gold.”
Piñon In The Kitchen
Piñon pine nuts (also called piñones) are usually smaller than the average pine nut and have a richer, more buttery flavor, with a higher fat content. Outside of New Mexico, it’s extremely challenging to find true piñon cuisine or beverages on any menu. New Mexico Piñon Nut Company is the only consistent source of piñon. If you’re cooking at home and can’t find or afford piñon pine nuts, regular pine nuts will do in a pinch.
PHOTOGRAPHY: Chad Chisholm Creative
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From our August/September 2024 issue.
