Black Walnuts

[bigtiller]

I have a wagon full of black walnuts that I would like to husk and eat or maybe give away. I have never done this and am looking for some advice on what to do next. I tryed eating one and decided they need to dry out first so I have them in the garage with a fan blowing over them now.

 

[frank_f15]

I have 4 black walnut trees scatrred around my yard , MAY YEARS AGO we tried doing what you want to do, we found they are two hard to open and the meat comes out in pieces and not really worth the effort. now you may have a differnt type of black walnut or you may not mind the time involved, so go at it. Best to husk them 1st as they will dry quicker. but as far as i amconcerned they are good for the squirles, putting black stains on my driveway and dulling my mower blades.
THIS OF COURSE IS JUST MHO

 

[meadowlarkponds]

Black walnuts are absolutely delicious. The reward is well worth the effort. Here in East Texas, most of them have been cut out for lumber and they are hard to find much to my regret.

In my childhood, we would gather them in feed sacks from out in the woods and lay them out in the driveway. Driving cars back and forth over them would break down the husks. Then what we couldn't eat, we sold for a pretty good price back then.

I really miss them and loved your post for the memories it brought back.

 

[Taylortractornut]

I remember when I was a littlekid my grandfather used to take walnuts and being inventive used to husk them in an old Cement mixer. He used chunks of steel, rocks bricks and ather abrasives and such. Plug it in for a few hours and then dump it out. It would husk them out clean. I thing he Used pea gravel up to bricks to get a mix of things to completely clean them. Onother use for some of the green fresh ones is to bust up the husks in a pillow case with a hammer or car then chunk it into a small pond. It stuns the fish. I know some folks that do this to get fish out of their farm ponds.

 

[LBrown59]

1*Black walnuts are absolutely delicious.
2*In my childhood, we would gather them in feed sacks from out in the woods and lay them out in the driveway. Driving cars back and forth over them would break down the husks. .
3*I really miss them and loved your post for the memories it brought back.

1*they sure are.
2*there was a tree across the street right in front of the house I grew up in from 1943 to 1964 .
Mom dad and me and my brother would gather the nuts from it and another tree about half a block away and scatter them in the gravel drive way .
driving over them done a fine job of husking them.
3*Really fond sentimental memories of long ago.


L . B .

 

[bky]

I have I would guess 30 to 50 trees maybe more and I have tried to do the walnut thing but I found them bitter tasting (after all the work of getting them out of the shell).

 

[Bill Barrett]

We have three trees, everytime we tried using them they were too wormy to eat.

 

[Flatheadyoungin]

a fella i used to work with (he retired) loved to eat walnuts and he had many trees....

he would take them to a local farm supply store and they would hull them for him...he said it was cheap.....i don't know an amount but he was pretty frugal....

he froze them and cooked them in everything......always had them as a snack...

seems like i read somewhere that you could use a corn shucker to hull walnuts.....i could be way off on this.......i've seen these old, hand powered shuckers on craigslist for about $100....but, again, it may be a different machine

 

[DocHeb]

My old-German grandfather would make a wood trough, 12"x12"x96", fill it with walnuts, and drive one of his steel-wheeled Model T wheels back and forth to open the shells.

 

[RayMunising]

To remove the husks I just spread them out on our limestone driveway and drive over them a couple times with my lawn tractor ... using the tires to break the husks. Then wear rubber gloves and remove the nut from the husk. Rubber gloves are very important or you'll stain your hands. Then let the nuts dry a month or two. My wife loves to make cookies with them. Much more flavorful then English walnuts you buy in the store but a fair amount of work. I personally like my wife's cookies regardless of the nuts she puts in 'em.

 

[Dargo]

ROFL! When I first met my wife almost 30 years ago I thought I'd help my future MIL out. It seemed that she always had walnuts all up and down their gravel driveway. I'd stop and walk up and down their driveway kicking them off the drive for her when I'd come by to pick up my wife for a date. It was a few weeks later when I stayed over for dinner that I heard her mom saying that some darn neighbor kids keep taking her walnuts from her driveway that she'd laid out to get husked. Oops.

I'd never heard of that before or since. I guess it must be a common thing to do. I just end up hitting them with the mower and laughing at my dumb dogs chewing on them.

 

[Nasty135]

I have a wagon full of black walnuts that I would like to husk and eat or maybe" give away" . I have never done this and am looking for some advice on what to do next. I tryed eating one and decided they need to dry out first so I have them in the garage with a fan blowing over them now.

We have three trees around the property and I must say my vote goes with Frank... They are very difficult to get into.

Although We have one Son who is,- Well - "NUTS" over them so he took it upon himself to gather hull (complete with the black fingers stain) and store too find that after opening there was nothing left inside, they rotted I suppose... I guess we may let him try again with some of this new found information "great" but he will be excited when he gets another go at it...

Thanks

I guess thats one way of getting the nuts picked up

 

[lhfarm]

a fella i used to work with (he retired) loved to eat walnuts and he had many trees....

he would take them to a local farm supply store and they would hull them for him...he said it was cheap.....i don't know an amount but he was pretty frugal....

he froze them and cooked them in everything......always had them as a snack...

seems like i read somewhere that you could use a corn shucker to hull walnuts.....i could be way off on this.......i've seen these old, hand powered shuckers on craigslist for about $100....but, again, it may be a different machine

My late FIL told me they used a hand crank corn shucker (adjusted to the widest position) to hull the walnuts. Haven't seen any for sale around here.

 

[weldingisfun]

To remove the husks I just spread them out on our limestone driveway and drive over them a couple times with my lawn tractor ... using the tires to break the husks. Then wear rubber gloves and remove the nut from the husk. Rubber gloves are very important or you'll stain your hands. Then let the nuts dry a month or two. My wife loves to make cookies with them. Much more flavorful then English walnuts you buy in the store but a fair amount of work. I personally like my wife's cookies regardless of the nuts she puts in 'em.

Back in the 1950's, my grandmother used to bake cookies with black walnuts. The best tasting cookies ever.

 

[Chuck52]

The quality of the meat in black walnuts varies dramatically from tree to tree. I have only one on my property since the right-of-way crew cut the other one down a few years ago. The one tree makes really good tasting nuts, and they are always well-filled, too. Since the tree is not in an area I mow, I usually just let the nuts lay on the ground until the husk turns black and soft. Then I pick them up wearing rubber gloves and squish the nuts out of the goo. I have cleaned them up from that stage by just stirring them in a wheelbarrow with water and changing the water a few times.....a hoe is good as the stirring rod. After they dry on the outside, they seem ready to crack....I guess letting them lay until the husk turns is enough to cure the nut meat. Anyway, the cracking and getting the meat out is the hard part. I hear some varieties, like Thomas, yield big meat pieces easily, but that is not true for my tree. I break as many nuts as I think I want to play with by holding them on an anvil and whacking them with a hammer.....carefully. I throw the cracked nuts in a bowl and spend the evening watching TV and picking out the nutmeat with a pick. It's slooooowwwwww work. I usually only get a pint or so of more-or-less clean nutmeat in a typical evening. Less if the wife gets to pick the show on TV, because then I often have to leave the room to maintain what's left of my sanity. However, black walnuts are fantastic to those of us who like them. Fudge is not fudge without them.

Chuck

 

[mjarrels]

We have lots of black walnut trees... $8.99 a pound for the meat, I have a large nut cracker, slow work but pays well! Also, worth $10.00 per hundred weight for just unopened nuts.

mark

 

[MossRoad]

... I heard her mom saying that some darn neighbor kids keep taking her walnuts from her driveway that she'd laid out to get husked. Oops. ...

Hahahaha!!! That's pretty good!

 

[MossRoad]

O.K. Here's my first year experience trying to get black walnuts...

After extensive research on the internet (the best source of true information out there) I have come up with this and it has worked O.K. so far...

People said that if you pick the nuts up when the husks are brown, the husk juice will have penetrated the nut and altered the taste of the nut meat, so you should pick them up when the nuts are green.

People said that you should run them over with tires, build a de-husker with an old knife, etc... I was looking for a lazy, ah, errr, time efficient method so I opted for the cement mixer method. Here's how that went...

First batch: slightly brown, slightly soft husks.
3 parts walnuts.
1 part water.
1 part gravel.

Turned it on. 20 minutes later I had a brown gooey mess that stuck the nuts to the sides of the mixer and they were not tumbling or cleaning themselves at all. So, I had to add more water... lots of water, to get them tumbling. That makes splashing, which causes a mess. Quickly rolled the mixer out into the yard over a spot where I would not care if the grass died. After about an hour, I had a very messed up mixer, but the walnuts were actually de-husked. I had to use long rubber gloves and old clothes, made a mess, etc... but I turned a 20 gallon container of nuts into three 3/4 full 5 pound mesh orange sacks of husked nuts with only about 10 minutes of actual labor. Not bad. I hosed them off a few times, let them dry for a while and bagged them up. Everyone says to hang them where they will not freeze for about 5-6 weeks before cracking them so that the meat shrinks from the nut, so now I wait.

Second batch: green husks.

Tossed in the nuts, tossed in the gravel, turned it on and started adding water until it tumbled well. 3 hours later 1/4 of the nuts were still in their husks. I may need bigger rocks. Anyhow, the results were still clean nuts ready to wash and bag.

I noticed the green husks nuts came out light gold while the brown husk nuts came out very dark, so the walnut stain may have an affect on the flavor. I will let everyone know how the taste is on both batches when I start cracking them. I will do test cracks each week to check. The cement mixer is a mess.

 

[bigtiller]

Thanks for all the help my friends. I have always wanted a cement mixer but I fear it would be a tool that everyone wants to borrow and besides, how often would I use one really. But I think I will start looking for one just for the fun of it. Driving over them does not work well with a 3/4 ton pick-up, they flatten out like pancakes on the concrete driveway. And my "bend-over" does not work as good as it used to so the method of rolling them under the tire of a jacked up car is out of the running. A friend told me he used rocks in his mixer the size of softballs, I have plenty of them. I may have a hard time finding a place for them to dry for 6 weeks without freezing.

 

[riptides]

I have two methods of getting walnuts.

One - let the squirrels get them.
Two - collect them as they drop, don't be smart enough to think you should be under the tree as they come down. I use old feed bags, I spread them on newspaper so they dry a little. I have an old corn crib, we call the nut house, specifically for this process.
I use an oak 2X6 with a hole in the middle, built up on twp oak logs. As the nuts are laid out, in the nut house, I await the perfect day to shuck them.

Then, I see my first point has worked out for another year.

I must find that entrance they are using, I do have chicken wire on the inside of the nut house.

I have done this for the last three years, I'll get it just right in time.