Good way to crack hickory nuts and chestnuts?

[Billy Bee]

I have an abundance of hickory and chestnuts this year, the most I have seen in 33 years of owning this property. So I decided to try these nuts for the first time, and wow, they are really good. I had to beat them with a hammer as my nutcracker and even vice grips didn't work. Is there some secret to
getting at the goodies? These nuts don't surrender their meat without a fight. An awful lot of work, and can't seem to get a decent sized piece of meat.
Thanks,
Bill

 

[Gary Fowler]

Don't know about chestnuts but hickory nuts/ black walnuts were never really worth the effort of bruised fingers by the hammer to get to the meat. Tasty meat for sure but for every tidbit, I would hit my finger at least once as a child. I haven't tried to shuck them in 50 years.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

First time you've tried them in 33 years?? dang, that's a shame!!

Anyway, I use a vise to crack those along with butternuts too...

I have a vise on every work bench, as they are just so useful!

SR

 

[2LaneCruzer]

There's a ton of information out there on the internet:


cracking Hickory nuts - Yahoo Search Results

I never had the patience to mess with them, although my Grand Dad liked the black walnuts. I would pick them up as a kid, put them in gunny sacks. He would pay me a buck a sack. He hauled them home, poured them out on his driveway (he lived on a farm) and running over them continuously for a week or so would get rid of the green husks. Don't know how he cracked them, but the standard method was a ball peen hammer.

 

[Egon]

A C clamp might work.

 

[MossRoad]

I thought all the chestnut trees died off decades ago.

 

[Sawyer Rob]

There's a "U-pick" Chestnut orchard not far from here...

SR

 

[buckeyefarmer]

nutcracker from amazon.

 

[MossRoad]

There's a "U-pick" Chestnut orchard not far from here...

SR

No kidding? A long time ago we were out east and were told almost all american chestnut trees had succumbed to chestnut blight in the early 1900s. Wiped em all out in the east. There's HUGE stumps scattered all over appalachia. 10' diameter trunks. They said most barns were made from chestnut, as it was rot resistant, as evidenced by the many old barns and buildings still standing. There's lots of small trees, but few reach maturity to have nuts.

I know people have been working on cross breeding them with asian varieties to try and get blight resistant trees. And there's some wheat gene splicing going on.

Do you know if the ones near you are true american chestnut, or some type of hybrid/cross?

Chestnut blight - Wikipedia

 

[mapper]

One of my dad's cousins had black walnut trees in her yard in Portland, she would spend the winter cracking them with a heavy screw type nutcracker and picking out the nutmeat. She would give us a quart jar full each year, they will spoil you for nuts in baked goods for life!
She was probably my favorite relative and she and her husband were the closest thing to grandparents we had. The most kind and generous person I have ever known.