How can you check the quality of cashews at home or at a store – within just 1 minute – without any special tools?

Many customers often receive products that taste bland, bitter, soft, or oily.

Here are the 4 quick-test steps used daily by professionals in the cashew industry – Simple, accurate, and applicable for both salt-roasted and dehydrated cashews.

1. Visual Check – color and salt coating (10 seconds)

✔ Whole, full, non-shriveled kernels -> Correct roasting temperature

✔ Naturally pale yellow to deep yellow color

❌ Too white -> usually under roasted or chemically bleached.

❌ Too dark or patchy -> over-roasted, likely to taste bitter

For salt-roasted cashews, the salt layer should be thin and even, not think or powdery.

2. Smell Test – Detecting old oil (10 seconds)

✔ Natural nutty aroma

❌ Rancid or “scratchy” oily smell

❌ Plastic-like or artificial scent -> Poor storage or added flavoring

Process of Quality Inspection at Dong Phu

3. Crunch Test – Using only 1 kernel ( 5 seconds)

Break 1 kernel in half:

✔ Audible “snap” -> Proper crispness

❌ Soft break, no sound -> Moisture absorption or old stock

Taste it:

✔ Crunch – creamy – naturally sweet

❌ Bland, bitter, or astringent -> Low-grade raw materials or poor processing.

4. Uniformity Check (10 seconds)

Especially important for wholesalers, B2B buyers, and retail stores:

✔ Kernels are fairly consistent in size -> Correct grading (W320, W240, W210, etc.)

❌Mixed big-small sizes -> Bad sorting quality, usually from careless factories.

How to know if a supplier is truly reliable?

Not every supplier has a proper Quality Control (QC) system.

Ask these 3 questions, and you will identify 90% of honest vs. unreliable suppliers”:

1. Do you have food safety and quality certifications?
2. Do you perform QC for every roasting/ drying batch?
3. Do you offer a guarantee if products don’t match the description?

Reputable suppliers answer transparent – without avoiding any question.

No machines.

No experience.

Just your senses.

This guide empowers both consumers and retail/B2B buyers to evaluate product quality before purchasing.

You can read “When Customers Fear Receiving Low-Quality Products” to understand more about how we control quality at Dong Phu Cashew here.