Strawberry & Pistachio Nougat Recipe
By Nicola Lando
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220 minutes prep time
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15 minutes cook time
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Intermediate
What is nougat made of?
Nougat, also known as torrone in Italy, is a type of confectionery made with sugar, honey, roasted nuts and whisked egg whites. Nougat has a chewy texture, and, as well as roasted nuts, can include chopped fruit and flavourings such as lemon and chocolate.
How do you store nougat?
Nougat is a wonderful edible bake to gift as it stores well. Once you’ve cut the nougat into squares, you can package it into an airtight container and eat within a month. If you want to give the nougat as a present, it can be wrapped in cellophane or kept in a Kilner jar.
How to flavour nougat
Strawberry and pistachios combine perfectly in this nougat recipe. The freeze-dried strawberry powder gives a hint of strawberry flavour and delicate pink colour, which contrasts with the vibrant green of the pistachios.
We've added beautiful and unique bright green skinless pistachio nuts to the nougat recipe for their intensity of colour. These green pistachios are a very special ingredient to keep in the store cupboard: add to vibrant Middle Eastern salads, grind finely to sprinkle vibrant pistachio powder over cakes and choux pastries, or chop and use to coat chocolate truffles. However, if you don't think you will use a whole 1kg bag over the next few months just exchange for ordinary pistachio nuts.
Finally, if you prefer to colour the whole of the nougat recipe a pale pink instead of the striations in the photos, just add the freeze-dried strawberry powder to the egg whites before whisking in the sugar syrup.
How to make nougat
Nougat is straightforward to make - and the method is very similar to that for making marshmallows. A very hot sugar syrup in whisked into beaten egg whites whilst it cools, forming a set foam. As the syrup is poured into the egg, the scent of honey wafts through the kitchen, and the egg mixture turns a very pale gold. You determine how firm the nougat recipe will set depending on the temperature the sugar syrup is heated to. Anything from 125°C for a very soft nougat to 155°C for a very firm set nougat.
Ingredients for nougat Serves: 10
- 2 sheets of A4 wafer paper
- 300g granulated sugar
- 150g honey
- 50g water
- 50g egg white (two small eggs)
- 150g green pistachio nuts
- 10g freeze-dried strawberry powder or ground freeze-dried strawberries
- Vegetable oil for greasing
Equipment for nougat
Method for nougat
- Heat together sugar, honey and water in a saucepan. Whilst the sugars are heating, whisk egg whites to firm peaks.
- When the sugar mixture reaches 145°C, with the whisk running at high speed, slowly pour the sugar syrup into the egg whites. Continue whisking as the nougat mixture cools. After 10 minutes the nougat will be thick and smooth, and after further few minutes it will become hard to work and start to tear apart.
- Turn off the whisk and add the pistachios and strawberry powder. Mix firmly with a wooden spoon until the nuts are well dispersed and the nougat comes together again in a ball. Turn out onto the centre of a sheet of wafer paper on your kitchen counter.
- Flatten the nougat with a lightly oiled spatula, and press over the second piece of wafer paper. Using a rolling pin, roll out to desired thickness.
- Leave to cool for 3-5 hours until set, trim away any excess rice paper and cut into squares shortly before eating.
Shop all baking ingredients, and try our pistachio macarons recipe here.
About the author
Nicola is co-founder and CEO at Sous Chef. She has worked in food for over ten years.
Nicola first explored cooking as a career when training at Leiths, before spending the next decade in Finance. However... after a stage as a chef at a London Michelin-starred restaurant, Nicola saw the incredible ingredients available only to chefs. And wanted access to them herself. So Sous Chef was born.
Today, Nicola is ingredients buyer and a recipe writer at Sous Chef. She frequently travels internationally to food fairs, and to meet producers. Her cookbook library is vast, and her knowledge of the storecupboard is unrivalled. She tastes thousands of ingredients every year, to select only the best to stock at Sous Chef.
Nicola shares her knowledge of ingredients and writes recipes to showcase those products. Learning from Sous Chef's suppliers and her travels, Nicola writes many of the recipes on the Sous Chef website. Nicola's recipes are big on flavour, where the ingredients truly shine (although that's from someone who cooks for hours each day - so they're rarely tray-bakes!).
