Black walnuts

[Boaz]

Ice cream !

[RGrosz]

My Grandma used to gather black walnuts out in the timber every year. Then while her and Grandpa were watching TV they would shell them. She had the best cookie recipe that used them I ever tasted. We got the recipe when she died and my wife made them. They didn't taste right they were good but there was something missing. Talked it over with her and she showed me the recipe, and all she had wrote down was walnuts. Went to a local shop and bought some Black walnuts and instead of using margarine talked her into using lard like she does in pie crusts. That was it, She thought they were better. Now if they weren't so hard to make, we'd have them all the time.
She's starting to add black walnuts to a lot of things. It definably changes the flavor of most.
Rob

[MaryB]

I miss the guy who used to sell some pecan nuts here every year... forget who it was..

[SSGOldfart]

I miss the guy who used to sell some pecan nuts here every year... forget who it was..

How many do you want? I picked up our first gallon this morning.

[w5pv]

Never had much luck fishing with them,probably because we didn't have enough concentration of the green walnuts

[wgr]

how do you guys get the small bits of hull out

[skeettx]

C-4 plastique

in reality, a nut pick sitting on the porch with friends
The little hull bits sure are bitter

Mike

[Thundarstick]

I've got one of these https://www.lehmans.com/product/stee...acker?show=all

It is the best black walnut and hickory nut cracker I've tried. Cracked from the ends it usually breaks the nut into 4 pieces, then I use a modified 6 inch pair of side cutter pliers to nipp the shell off the meats. One nut usually yealds 4 intact kernels from each nut. There isn't a chocolate nut brownie, blondie, or cookie recipe that isn't better using black walnuts. I'm going out to pick up some now! Free food at that!

[mold maker]

My Granny made the absolute best black walnut cake I ever had. She only made it on special occassions and I never missed one.
At least for me, accumulating enough to use cracking with a hammer, is a lost cause.

[Multigunner]

Our trees make walnuts that have a very strong taste that I don't care for. Also since losing my last molars I don't eat nuts these days.

Anyway I've begun a new batch of natural walnut stain. Been some years since I made any.

I take whole walnuts with hull intact and seal them in a plastic bag and leave them where they get some sun.
After a few weeks the thick syrupy stain gathers in the bottom of the bag and around the inside. This is the best of the stain, with a very dark brown hue. To apply to wood I soak a rag in rubbing alcohol and wipe some stain off the inside of the bag then apply to the wood. The more the stain is thinned and the more applications of the thinned stain the more even the finished product will be.

I also take the remaining nuts and put these in a wire strainer over a pot . I pour scalding hot water over the nuts to draw out the last of the stain. I then leave the mixture in a old baking pan to dry in the sun, leaving a crust on the metal. I apply as mentioned earlier. Stain from this method has a lighter and slightly reddish hue.

Next time I may mix both types together to see what sort of hue results.


As for clearing away nuts on the ground my dog loves chasing them when I chuck them towards the back fence. I bounce them a bit to mimic a bounding cottontail.

I prefer to pile the nuts up along the back fence because the neighborhood squirrels dispose of them for me.

When I was a youngster I made a cannon using a capped piece of pipe. I'd load a fresh walnut in its husk over an M80 or cherry bomb and send it sailing down range. The neighborhood is now pretty thick with walnut trees in that direction.

[swamp]

I would like to try making some stain from the hulls. Anyone have a medium or large frb of hulls to sell?
swamp

[Thundarstick]

Our trees make walnuts that have a very strong taste

That stain leaches into the nut and gives that strong taste. The secret? Pluck them up green, scuff the hull off the nuts with your boots, then rinse in running water untill out runs clear, and spread then out to dry. Crack at your convenience after that. I prepped about 100 this evening.

[Iowa Fox]

Our trees have very good tasting walnut meats. I've got a winter supply hulled, washed and drying for my wife to crack this winter. The rest are going to get hauled down to the creek in the timber. In two days the squirrels have them gone. We're getting a pretty good pile of shellbark hickory nuts on the drying screen this year which I prefer to the walnuts. My wife cracks them in January and has found the meats shrink a little from the shell making things much easier. She uses a big gear driven cast iron nut cracker her old uncle gave her years ago when he got to old to do nuts anymore. It has a cupped holder for the nut and a tin shield you lower around the nut to control shell splatter when they crack. No pecans this year, the Blue Jays get them every year.

[yeahbub]

I haven't set aside the time to crack walnuts in a few years, but what Multigunner writes about extracting the stain sounds very interesting, but my purpose would be for use as old-timey ink for dip pens, letter writing, calligraphic lettering, etc. I have used walnut stain for it before and, depending on concentration, it leaves a fine sepia tone on the paper. Paper of good density will leave behind a sharp, shiny wet line the width of the pen point which doesn't blot or spread out. If it does, either use different paper or add Gum Arabic to the ink to slightly thicken it by degrees until it behaves properly. Crushed poke berries also make good ink, but they're toxic, so keep it away from the kids.

As for taste, hickories and pecans are just hard to stop eating, but mom used to make a nut cake heavy with ground walnuts, coffee and chocolate. Moist and rich, it was never around long.

[smokeywolf]

Dad used to buy walnut burl stock blanks from an outfit back east. They'd been seasoned for 10 to 20 years when he bought them.

When I was a kid we moved to a somewhat rural area about 60 miles North of Los Angeles. There was a good sized walnut orchard about 1-1/2 miles from the house. They dozed that orchard in about in the late '60s. Wish I'd been smart enough to ask the land owner if I could buy a few small pieces of burl.

Not allowed to eat nuts anymore. Sure miss pecan pie. Now the only thing I use nut woods for is smoking meats.

[MaryB]

Pecan and hickory nut shells are good for smoking too! Toss on the charcoal or in a foil packet on your gas burner to add a nice smoke flavor to anything.

[Iowa Fox]

Pecan and hickory nut shells are good for smoking too! Toss on the charcoal or in a foil packet on your gas burner to add a nice smoke flavor to anything.

Good one Mary. Never thought of that.

[Silverseas]

We had walnut tree on the playground of my grade school in Omaha. You can imagine the mischief we go into with all that ammo.

[pmer]

I have a drying question about the Black Walnuts. I picked a couple buckets 3 weeks ago and hulled them. I figured they would crack by now after air drying for three weeks. I had them in the garage where it was cool and dry. The last week or so the temperature was dropping close to freezing and below freezing though.

If I understand correctly they should crack to indicate they're dry enough storage? Maybe they need more time in the basement where it isn't so cold?

[Thundarstick]

Crack one and see if the goody is pulled away from the wooden hull. If it is, crack away, if not, dry a little longer. I never noticed them really crack from drying, and have kept them in the hull for years in a cool dry place.