Cracked open my first ever black walnut.

[SwampDonkey]

....and here is what it looks like.



Folks do you have to husk and dry them a bit before breaking into them? Because it looks still green to me. I know we dried butternuts in the fall after we picked them. But, I can't remember them looking this green in October, that was about time to make fudge. The seed does look well developed though. Do you guys roast them? We never did roast butternuts. The nuts just dropped from the trees last week.

Can someone help an old nut cracker? 

[beenthere]

Yes, black walnuts are dried. No need to roast them.

Did you remove the papery skin on the nut meat?

When green, the nut meat is a bit rubbery. Not so after they dry.

[Tom]

How do you dry them, beenthere, with the hulls on, or the hulls off?   Green, to me, means not ripe. Do you mean that the rubbery meat of the nut is not ripe or just that it hasn't been dried (cured)?

How do you know that the nut is ripe?
How do you take the husk off to get to the hull?
Will the Husk stain?
will the nut stain?

[SwampDonkey]

Yes, black walnuts are dried. No need to roast them.

Ok, great.

Did you remove the papery skin on the nut meat?

Nope, never touched it yet.

When green, the nut meat is a bit rubbery. Not so after they dry.

Ok, green means not cured I guess. I plan on husking a few more and keeping in fridge for spring potting. Green (not matured) butternuts are all withered and not filled out. Same goes for walnut I assume. 

How do you dry them, beenthere, with the hulls on, or the hulls off?   Green, to me, means not ripe. Do you mean that the rubbery meat of the nut is not ripe or just that it hasn't been dried (cured)?

We used to put down newspaper in the attic and spread the nuts out even on that until the husk was dry and withered on the butternuts. But their husk is very thin. I guess you'd take the husks off with a hammer or knife.

How do you take the husk off to get to the hull?
Will the Husk stain?

What I did was whack it with the hammer on a cement ledge. The green husk stains, smells citrusy to.

will the nut stain?

Don't think so or I don't think it would be too palatable.

[Fla._Deadheader]

 First, ya gotta make several forays to all the Walnut trees, to beat the tree rats from absconding with the merchandise. Sack 'em as ya pick 'em. Leave the sacks until all nuts are gathered. Then, spread 'em in the driveway, and let all the car traffic de-hull them things. Re-sack 'em. Crack 'em as ya need 'em. Most are done before Christmas*, so folks use 'em for cakes and such.

  The outside of the meat should have a tannish hue to it, and the meat should be pretty firm. The inside of the meat should be an off white, kinda. You may have cracked that one a month too early. Never lived in Canuckistan, so, not exactly for shore.

[SwampDonkey]

Yeah FD, our red squirrels never touch'm. They go for the butternuts exclusively. They can lay were they are all winter and never move. But, I'm going out tomorrow and high grade them, husk them, dry them for a spell and refridge them to make ready to pot them in spring.

I think if ya want to eat'm, ya gotta cure them a bit more I guess. When we picked butternuts to eat we waited for heavy frost and the husk was black. Dried for a month and then cracked them. Man are they some good. mmm 

Thanks. 

I'm going to roast this one for kicks.

[beenthere]

How do you dry them, beenthere, with the hulls on, or the hulls off?   Green, to me, means not ripe. Do you mean that the rubbery meat of the nut is not ripe or just that it hasn't been dried (cured)?

How do you know that the nut is ripe?
How do you take the husk off to get to the hull?
Will the Husk stain?
will the nut stain?

The green hull surrounding the nutshell will soften when the nut falls from the tree (they be ripe then). At that time, FDH mentions a good plan, or don some rubber gloves and rub the now black hull covering off the nut. Throw in water and tumble around to wash the black covering and black goo off the nut. Lay out to dry (preferably where the squirrels can't get to them). Also, toss out the floaters as they are likely hollow or bad. That black husk will stain..good reason for the rubber gloves (which we didn't have as kids, so just ended up with black stained fingers). 

The dried nut has a hard shell, and it will not stain. After drying, the nut meat inside is as described and firm. Not rubbery, as when green.
 

[SwampDonkey]

Looks good.

For each one of my good walnuts I crack open, I think of a tree I could be growing. Not too plentiful up here in the tundra.

I roasted that walnut, all it did was wither it.

Gotta be patient I guess. 

[Don P]

A friend of ours just learned about the hand staining. She called wanting a remedy, I don't know of one. She's a nurse, must have been a few days of explaining 

[SwampDonkey]

Mines stained and seems to go deep in the hide. Be cleared up in a couple months.

[Jeff]

Hamburger grease running out the sides of a Sportsman's Bar Hamburger will remove tannin stains.

[Amos]

Hello eveyone,
This is my first post.
I love these nuts. Behind my house is a golf course which I take my dog's for a walk on in the winter when all of the golfers have put there clubs away for the winter. There are five black walnut trees on the course. I wait utill early spring and will take a potato bag and gather the nuts that the squriels have kindly left behind. At that point the outside green covering is off and I put them in a cool dry place and wait untill early summer to harvest the fantastic meats.
I have spent so many hours on a sleeping blanket on my cement driveway with my trusty hammer and my two dogs next to me shelling them. I will put the walnut meats in ziplock baggies two cups at a time and then will place them into the freezer. Of course the first few cups go to baking with. There is no other flavor quite the same.
I have moved up North Michigan and will have to drive the three hours home to reload my freezer this spring.
Do you have black walnut trees in your yard?

Amos

[Texas Ranger]

Let me be the first to say Howdy, and welcome to the forum.  Yeah, I got some black walnuts, got em drying now, have two trees and have maybe 3 bushel this year.

[ely]

as for eating them harold has the plan. we let the tires get the husk off.
i used to use the green walnuts fresh off the tree to stain my traps each fall to prepare for trapping season.
 a person can also take those green nuts and put them in several toe sacks. drive over the sacks untill you have them mushed out good and juicey. take those sacks down to a hole in the river where the current is real slow. soak the sacks in the hole for a bit and you can gather most if not all the fish out of that hole.  at least thats what i have heard, i would never have been party to such an action, i assure you.

[SwampDonkey]

Welcome aboard Amos. Good thread to start in.

Yes, I to have some black walnut in my yard and also a big old butternut.  I guess you could call me a butternut cultivator. I saved some nuts off my trees this fall and have them sitting in my fridge awaiting to be planted and nurtured this spring in pots. I never ate a black walnut yet, so there might be the odd one end up under the hammer this winter. However, I have eaten many butternuts.

I know of 3 other folks around me that have black walnut trees. Each have 2 to 3 yard trees. They are a non native tree to New Brunswick. I never see them at local tree nurseries, but I do see butternut trees for sale. Butternut grows here in the wild. But, not real common after you leave the southern and central river valleys. I don't think it grows in the other 'Maritime' Provinces.


The lengths some folks go to husk walnuts.  We need videos. 

[turningfool]

looks to me like they need to be stored a little longer sd

[SwampDonkey]

Yup, their stored.


Wow, December 1st already.

[slowzuki]

Hey Swampy my wife wanted me to ask you a question, how do you prep butternuts for planting?  We missed out this year, the squirrels took every nut off our 3 butternuts before they hit the ground.  She is hoping to plant a few as the bark is begining to lift off ours and the limbs are dropping pretty regularly.

[SwampDonkey]

slozuki, I would make sure the  seeds are treated with a fungicide if your trees have the canker. The fungus will stick to the husk of the butternut and travel with it.  Don't have any canker around here yet that I've seen. My butternut in the yard is very healthy. Keep in mind a dying butternut isn't necessarily a diseased one, since they are short lived trees (75 years or so is an old one). Maybe the folks at Scott's (George probably) can help with the fungicide to use. At the same time you can test the seed viability with the floater test in a water bucket. Floaters are dead nuts. You don't have to husk them, I never do.

Then find an area in the back yard with low cover and make a 2 inch hole and plunk'm in. They really don't have to be buried, but it keep the rodents from finding them. Do this in fall because they need to break dormancy over winter. Usually, you find them up through the ground in July. A lot will not survive the next winter, but that seems to be normal. But, cut some cages for the seedlings out of that 1 cm square cage wire and make them tall enough to protect the main stem. Mice love the chew the bark off for easy food. Some seedling stems that die may sprout from the root, so don't give up on them. A good healthy seedling will have a big fat bud set at the end of the summer. Also, be patient with their growth. They take about 5 years to establish a good root system before growing rapidly in height. So the first few years they grow 1-3 inches a year. Yeah, too bad it's not the tropics.   

Surprisingly, the seedlings are somewhat tolerant to shade. I used to find them under the sugar maple forest on back of the farm sometimes.  That whole hardwood ridge covering about 6-8 woodlots had big butternut treess years ago. They have been mostly cut, but there are many seedlings growing back up.

cheers

I have a 7 footer I have to transplant for the neighbors, it was born off my big old yard tree.

[IL Bull]

When I was raising cows they would pick up the walnut and eat the hull and spit the unshelled nut out.  Then I would pick the nuts up and put them in a tub and store in my metal building.  I found out later that all I was doing was feeding the mice.   When I went to get some to crack the mice had chewed through the shell and ate the nut meat. 

[SwampDonkey]

I don't know if I had a dozen on my butternut tree this year. It's surprising though. Just when I think I have them all picked up, I'll find a new seedling the next year.

[Roxie]

We had a black walnut tree in the yard when I was a kid.  I remember gathering the nuts after they fell, and we'd put them on an old screen door that was laying down with four cinder blocks holding it off the ground.  The outside shell would begin to fall off after about a month, and we'd rub the rest off.  (We had a dog, so squirells didn't bother the nuts).

When the outside shell was completely dry, we'd open them with the old hand nut cracker.  My grandfather always made a black walnut cake out of them for Christmas. 

[pigman]

After reading this thread I have learned something. I thought walnuts were like peaches where you eat the fruit and throw away the hard seed . 

[Phorester]

Black walnut is very common here.  There used to be a rough old local codger that would de-hull walnuts and crack them with a hammer on a chunk of railroad rail.  He loved the nuts, and did this every fall. He was in his 70s when I met him.   He made a living as a carpenter, auto mechanic, a little farming. Bragged he never wore a pair of gloves his entire life even in winter. His hands were huge, knarly, and cracked. Each fall they would be stained brown a couple months from the walnuts, until the stain wore off.

Intresting, though, I met him while playing music.  Those huge hands of his would glide effortlessly up and down the neck of a guitar playing western swing music.  Never played single notes, always played a full chord for each note.  Died a few years ago.

[Lanier_Lurker]

Grotesquely large hands are a real plus when it comes to guitar playing.

Steve Morse, Allan Holdsworth, and other "musician's musicians" have this claim to fame.

And then, there is always Jeff Healy (rip).....

[Dodgy Loner]

After reading this thread I have learned something. I thought walnuts were like peaches where you eat the fruit and throw away the hard seed . 

  I thought your teeth looked a little stained when I met you last year at the Pig Roast.  I figured it was tobacco juice .

[pigman]

Dodgy, you must be confused about the teeth thing. Don't forget I invented the tooth brush.