Have a Nutty Christmas!

There’s something familiar and festive about cracking nuts and roasting chestnuts by the fire at Christmas  — winter-time pleasures to be enjoyed whilst spending time with friends and family over the festive season! Nuts have been part of winter feasts for centuries and traditionally included in children’s Christmas stockings.

But nuts are not just traditional festive foods, they are nutritional powerhouses — packed with energy, healthy fats, and so many nutrients that make them one of the best things you can snack on over the holidays.

There are lots of tasty ways to include nuts on the menu over Christmas. So, whether your favourites are walnuts, almonds, pecans or pistachios, here are our suggestions for great ways to enjoy these crunchy treats over the festive season.

Photo by Jonathan Borba

Why nuts belong on the menu at Christmas

As well as being a traditional Christmas food, nuts are very rich in nutrients, including key minerals such as copper, manganese, phosphorous and magnesium.

A recent umbrella review assessed 23 meta-analysis and 66 articles on biomarkers for disease and found that eating nuts regularly was linked to a lower risk of cardiovascular disease and all-cause mortality. The researchers concluded that:

“..evidence supports dietary recommendations to consume a handful of nuts and seeds per day for people without allergies to these foods”.

Some of the health  benefits of nuts are shown below:

Nut	Key nutrients	Good for
Walnuts	Omega-3 (ALA), polyphenols	Brain & heart health
Almonds	Vitamin E, calcium, magnesium	Skin, bones & blood sugar control
Brazil nuts	Selenium	Thyroid & antioxidant defence
Hazelnuts	Vitamin E, folate	Heart protection & healthy fats
Pistachios	B6, lutein, potassium	Eye health & mood support
Pecans	Polyphenols, monounsaturated fats	Antioxidant and cholesterol-lowering

Festive ways to enjoy nuts this Christmas

Nuts are wonderfully versatile — they can be used in both sweet and savoury dishes, adding crunch, richness, and nutrition. There are so many ways to add nuts to the menu over Christmas.

For starters

Nuts can easily be used to make snacks to serve with drinks if you have friends or family around over Christmas. You can just serve unsalted mixed nuts, or add a little seasoning.

But roasting nuts brings out the flavours and helps to reduce their phytic acid content.  it’s also good to spice nuts up a little during the festive season. Here are some options for roasted spicy nuts:

Spicy nuts

Real Simple Good provide a recipe which involves coating nuts in a lovely savoury spicy mix and roasting them in the oven. This recipe uses walnuts, almonds, cashews and hazelnuts, but you can use your favourite nuts. Spices include chilli, garlic, cumin and cayenne pepper.

Real Simple Good recipe for Spicy Nuts

Ottolenghi spicy nuts

Yotam Ottolenghi has a different approach to spicy nuts and his recipe uses seeds, rosemary, a little honey as well as nuts to make a delicious wintery snack. Again, a very simple recipe which uses cashews, macadamias, pecans and almonds along with pumpkin, sunflower and nigella seeds.

Yotam Ottlenghi's Spicy Nuts recipe

Walnut pate

You might consider using walnuts to make a wonderful pate for a starter using a recipe such as one by the Spruce Eats. The pate combines walnuts, olive oil and fresh herbs to make a delicious and nutritious pate. The recipe uses Nama Shoyu, which is a Japanese soy sauce, but you can use standard soy sauce as a replacement.

Raw Walnut Herb Pate recipe by the Spruce Eats

For the main course

Festive nut roast with mushrooms

You don’t have to be a vegetarian to enjoy a festive nut roast over the festive season. Try this Doctor’s Kitchen mushroom nut roast recipe, which is filled with nuts, chestnut mushrooms, lentils, garlic, smoked paprika and many delicious vegetables.

Doctors Kitchen Mushroom nut roast with mushrooms

Butter fried sprouts with crispy shallots and almonds

Use nuts to turn a side-dish of Brussel's sprouts into a feast! This BBC Good Food recipe combines Brussel sprouts with shallots and almonds for a Christmas treat

BBC Good Food recipe for Butter Fried Sprouts with crispy shallots and almonds

Festive Nut and Cranberry Stuffing

How about including a nutty low carb stuffing as part of your Christmas dinner. Peace, Love and Low-carb use cauliflower as a base for a great low-carb stuffing, which is filled with pecan nuts, cranberries and fresh herbs.

 Peace Love and Low-carb recipe for Cranberry Pecan Low-carb Stuffing

For afters

Florentines

My absolute favourites at Christmas are Florentines! These gorgeous little nutty chocolate covered biscuits are a real treat and also make great gifts.

Felicity Clarke at the Guardian has an excellent recipe which uses dark chocolate with flaked almonds, a few pistachio nuts and dried fruit. The recipe includes a little demerara sugar combined with butter in order to bind together the dried fruit and nuts. So, each Florentine is moderately low carb – at about 12g carbs per biscuit. However, it is possible to reduce the sugar content by taking out the mixed peel and figs and just using a few tart cherries. Or you can remove the dried fruit altogether and replace with more almonds, which reduces the carb content to around 7g carbs per biscuit.

Felicity Clarke's Florentine recipe

And finally....

Dark chocolate nut clusters

You can’t beat the combination of dark chocolate and nuts! Cinnamon and Kale have a very simple recipe for nut clusters in which you melt the chocolate with a little coconut oil or butter, then add whichever type or mix of nuts you like, before setting out clusters on a baking tray. Cool in the fridge. If you like your nuts a little crunchy, roast them in the oven for a short while on a low heat before adding them into the chocolate.

Cinnamon and Kale's Dark Chocolate Nut Clusters recipe

Wishing you all a very Happy Christmas and all the very best for 2026!