In the sunny state of New Mexico, a handful of adventurous coffee roasters add piñons, small pine nuts that grow in the Southwest U.S., to give their coffee a local flavor, balancing coffee beans’ bitterness with piñons’ rich and buttery notes.
Indigenous communities in the Southwest discovered and ate piñon nuts from the Pinus edulis tree many years before Europeans arrived, as evidenced by cracked nutshells found at archaeological sites. Like other pine nuts (you may know the European variety from classic basil pesto), piñons are protein-rich and a good source of essential vitamins and minerals, plus they have a sweet, buttery taste. Native American tribes ground the nuts with a stone, sometimes turning them to a nutritious mush. Today, piñon nuts might be used in many other ways in cooking, such as sprinkled over salads, used to make desserts, or simply eaten as snacks. But now, climate change threatens to make this already scarce crop even harder to get hold of.
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