Hello again pistachio lovers!
                   

After visiting Bulgaria and trying out Sofia’s pistachios, we feel like it’s a fantastic idea for us to check out what their western neighbor has to offer. Next up, North Macedonia!

In North Macedonia, We encountered a couple different types of pistachios. Some were sold openly outside tuck shops just like in Sofia. Others we came across while visiting the local supermarkets. There were multiple brands that looked enticing and peaked our interest, however, one specific one stood out: Panorama Ohrid’s Magic Pistachios!

Today, our guest contributor Nikola will be throughly reviewing these pistachios from North Macedonia.

The Packaging

As we can see, it’s a 150g bag with a cute squirrel on top. Right next to it, we can see the company logo “Panorama Ohrid” –  a local city’s brand.

 We’re assuming the company produces multiple types of nut & fruit products, as shown by the imagery near the bottom. The pistachios themselves look fresh and full. The shells looks healthy, and at first sight the roast looks adequate. So far, it looks like all of these macedonian pistachios have a reddish tint.

On the top left, the production label states that it was produced & manufactured in Ohrid. However on the bottom right, it states that it was sourced from the EU, without specifying the country. I wonder what country that may be?

Aside from that, we can see some basic nutrition info on the bottom left. Adjusted for the weight of the bag, it comes out to 870.5 pistachio k calories, 39g of carbohydrates, and interestingly, 828 mg of calcium.

Enough of that, time to open it up!

The visual aspect of these “Magic” Macedonian Pistachios 

When we opened the bag, we were met with a strong salt & pistachio smell, with a hint of roast & earthiness.  

This was the first pistachio we took out. We can see a few salt crystals on the pistachio. The shell was perfect. 

There were a dozen or so unopened pistachios that we didn’t want to throw away. We all hate having to struggle opening closed pistachios or very difficult to open shells, especially when watching a movie or not paying attention. Luckily, we carry a Bear Grylls multi-tool on us so no pistachio is impossible to crack! They should add “effective Pistachio-breaker” into their list of benefits.

These unopened and in away, factory untouched pistachios were tasty. They had a natural saltiness to them, with a touch of floralness that made them taste great.

After opening them up, all in all, all of them were medium sized, with a reddish-brown color. From one pistachio to the next, we didn’t notice any imperfections, so quality-wise they were consistent. The only thing that was inconsistent was the amount of added salt. At times the salt completely enveloped the pistachio.

Most of the time though, they had just the right amount of salt, as shown in the picture above. The roast looks appropriate, and I’m not noticing any physical defects.

We wonder how it might look on the inside.

As you can see, it’s fairly smooth and consistent all throughout its surface. The shell of the pistachio is relatively thin, thin enough to give texture to the taste. Luckily for us, we didn’t come across any fungus or bugs in any of the pistachios because who likes bugs or mold in their pistachios?

How do they taste? 

There were some good qualities that remained consistent among the pistachios but there was a decent amount of bad-tasting outliers though.

Downsides

The first noticeable downside was the inconsistent salt quantity from one pistachio to the next. Some were covered with an insane amount of salt to the point where you couldn’t see the pistachio itself. You can guess how much that overwhelmed the flavor. 

Another downside was the small amount of pistachios that roasted too much and had a charred flavor to them. It didn’t impact the other flavors a lot, but it was still noticeable. That was it though. Onto the positives!

Upsides

First off, we would say that almost all of them had a fantastic, mouth-watering, nice crunchy taste. A majority of them were juicy, jam packed with a strong pistachio-y flavor, with an interesting buttery feel & taste. It reminded me a lot of the pistachio butter we have at home.

Talking about buttery taste, we haven’t reviewed many pistachio butters yet, but this one is pretty delicious. It’s from the Pistachio Factory. We’ve used it as a topping, a spread, a flavoring, I’ve even used it for baking. It improved our diet and was exactly what we was looking for. Being pistachio lovers, we constantly need easy access to that pistachio flavor and this butter definitely does the job and you can try it out yourself. Click here if you’d like some.

What that pistachio butter lacks in though, is the natural experience of eating pistachios from the source! Part of the experience is the casing of the pistachios which give them a great texture. In this bag of “Magic” pistachios we picked up in North Macedonia, the casings provided a great benefit to the overall texture of these pistachios which is a big part of the pistachio tasting experience.

Conclusion

Overall we would say that it was a positive experience. We were disappointed by the salt inconsistency, but the other qualities of these pistachios somewhat make up for it. They’re quite addictive as well as it was difficult to put the bag down after as we kept on cracking open these beauties.

Considering the salt inconsistency, the rare presence of charred pistachios, and the buttery, crunchy, juicy, pistachio taste, we’ll give these magical Macedonian pistachios a solid 3.8.

If you haven’t checked them out already, I recommend reading our other European pistachio reviews. Bulgaria, Prague, and especially Bosnia & Herzegovina were fantastic!