A Healthy Trail Mix Recipe

Here's a very easy healthy trail mix recipe. This is easy for kids to make and it's a good alternative to the usual commercial snack foods and sweets.

Quality ingredients from (almost) local producers

The key element in an healthy trail mix recipe is to use nuts and dried fruits which don't have any artificial additives or added sugar.

If they are also organic in origin, so much the better. These days it is quite easy to source quality organic dried nuts and fruits from around the world.

You may think, if you are a fan of green living (and if you've found this site, you almost certainly are!) that buying produce from around the world is not so green. It's certainly true that shipping is now a major cause of CO2 emissions and environmentalists are trying to find ways to reduce that.

You can almost certainly create a healthy trail mix recipe using only produce from your own area (unless you live in Greenland, maybe!) To do this might be a great activity for kids, teaching them about origins, food miles and local diversity. And it could be fun for anyone - I haven't tried it yet but I'm sure it's possible to do here in Britain.

However, I believe there's no need for us to be too punctilious about it. You can try to use fruit and nuts from as nearby as possible, of course. For the most part, your healthy trail mix recipe will work just as well as otherwise.

The dried nuts and fruits that go to make up the bulk of a good trail mix are generally shipped by sea as they store quite well. Only a minority of such produce is flown about the world. Ways to make shipping greener will be making their appearance soon, lets hope.

Here's a list of nuts, fruits and seeds

These can all be included in a good healthy trail mix recipe.

Dried Fruits

Dates
Raisins
Sultanas
Currants
Apricots
Peaches
Apples
Pears
Banana
Cherries
Blueberries

Most of the above can be bought without any added sugar or preservatives. Some (apricots, peaches) can be found as unsulphured dried fruit.

Nuts and Seeds

Peanuts (groundnuts)
Almonds
Brazils
Walnuts
Hazels or cob nuts
Pecans
Macadamia
Coconut
Pumpkin seeds
Sunflower seeds
Sesame seeds

You don't have to have everything. A more distinctive taste can be achieved by limiting the nuts and fruits to a few main types so that some flavours predominate.

If you are buying the ingredients especially for your trail mix recipe then buy whole nuts as they are less likely to be at all rancid. If you can shell them yourself, even better. The most important thing is to get good quality, fresh tasting produce. Nuts and seeds can quite easily become rancid if they are old or poorly stored. See the nutritional benefits of nuts for more details on this.

Almonds and hazels are better without their protective brown skins. Almonds can be blanched in very hot water for a few minutes. Plunge them in cold water and the skins shrivel and become loose, and then peeled them by hand. Otherwise, buy them ready to use but make sure they are fresh - you can see rancid spots developing as they become almost translucent rather than opaque.

Hazels can be lightly toasted under a moderate grill for a few minutes - turn them often to prevent burning. Let them cool and then rub the outer skin away between your palms. It's best to add these toasted ingredients to trail mix which you are going to use very soon; toasted ingredients easily lose their pizzazz.

You can also toast some of the nuts and seeds to bring out the flavours, especially if you are going to use the trail mix soon.

The bigger nuts and fruits need to be chopped to manageable sizes. Take a large sharp knife and hold the tip down with one hand. Roll the knife blade back and forth over the nuts without letting the tip up from the chopping board. This stops the nuts pinging about all over your kitchen!

Keep changing the angle of cut until you have a desirable size for most chunks. This works OK for fruit, too, though you may prefer just to slice it with a small sharp knife.

A suggested mix

Healthy trail mix recipe: cashews, blueberries, pecans, peanuts and brazils

Here's a specific mix for a healthy trail mix recipe to try - though I'm sure most readers will prefer to make their own! You could start off with this one and just vary one or two elements to your own liking.

Peanuts 200g
Hazels 100g
Walnuts 100g
Raisins 100g
Sultanas 100g
Apricot 100g
Coconut 50g
Sunflower seeds 50g
Sesame 50g

Prepare everything as described above and put it into an air-tight container or bag.

If it's not needed immediately, then if you can vacuum pack it, so much the better.

Picture above: A healthy trail mix recipe - some ingredients, including cashews, blueberries, peanuts,pecans and brazils.

Return from A Healthy Trail Mix Recipe back to Green Recipe Book

Greenfootsteps Home - for more easy green living ideas

footer for healthy trail mix recipe page