BLACK WALNUTS: How to Harvest, Clean, and Crack Walnuts, Share Your Food Memories

[Music] black walnuts are recognized as one of the most healthy of the tree nuts it is low in saturated fats high in unsaturated fats and it's a great source of protein vitamin A in minerals so I've had this tree growing in the yard for quite some time I don't know how old this tree is and it's always dropping nuts in the fall in October so I thought I would go ahead and try to harvest and crack these black walnuts it's something that I've never done before so last October when the nuts started to fall I went ahead and started gathering them up a lot of times I noticed this for moles we'll get them before I can so every day I just collected a little bit until I had a nice bucket full this bucket was probably collected over about a one to two week time period so the first thing that I did was take off the outer husk and this is a very messy and very hard job now I'm just cutting this kind of into my hand just to kind of loosen up that outer husk you might want to use a cutting board and just cut down on it and set it into your hand I tend to do this more than I probably should but anyway I just cut it all the way around kind of like you would an avocado and then I twisted it and it would usually pop right off and if it didn't I went ahead and went crosswise on it as well and you also have got to wear gloves when you do this this little pair of disposable gloves didn't last probably five or six nuts before I had to go inside and get some rubber gloves because it the stain that comes out of these little high school actually stain your gloves and for instance the gloves that I was wearing it was going through my gloves so it can also irritate your skin so you definitely need to wear gloves after you get the husk off you just pour them into a bucket or somewhere probably not around vegetation that you like because there's a substance in here that can harm plants so with a very powerful stream from your hose just say I'm real good and it will help remove the substance is on the outside of that once you have a good bit of water in your bucket go ahead and feel for floaters if there are any of the nuts that are floating they are not going to be good night so discard those if you have some that are floating and then you'll want to go ahead and give them another good rinse I found that this little crate worked out perfect for rinsing off the nuts and I just continue to do this with the rest of the nuts and a small batch you could do it in a larger batch but I felt like I could get them cleaner if I just did a little bit by little bit [Music] some once they're all rinsed they'll probably look something like this and then I had a little wire shelf and so on a paper towel I just went ahead and put those on there and I actually put these in my garage to let them dry out there's probably other ways that you could let them dry but this is a very important step in order to crack these open I tried to crack mine open after about two weeks leaving them on the shelf in my garage which gets about 50 degrees Fahrenheit and it was impossible I mean I I was I did manage to get some meat out but it took forever so I just left them in there and then about six months later they were a lot easier to crack open so I set up a little station and I just got some old towels and I situated each nut so that the pointed side was up and the rounded side was down and you'll notice that when you look at your nut and it was kind of separating a little bit so I just took my little hammer and went straight down on the nuts to open them up and because they hit worked nice and dry a lot of times they would shatter and you'll just break right up and at this point I'm just cracking them open so they're in nice large manageable pieces so that I can go in there and pick the nut meat out I'll change out my towel so it's nice and clean and then I can just pick the nut meat out and then we can just give it a little tap right there on the end if it's like a half piece just to kind of expose that nut me [Music] [Applause] [Music] okay so new it's time to pick the nut meat so I got me a little pic at the grocery store and just got in there and kind of loosened up the little meats there and I always liked it when a big piece would fall out I guess you would call that a satisfying moment but because this was a lot of work and I will not do this again but like I said I thought it would be fun to give it a try and I do have to say that this nut meat was so much better than when I bought at the grocery store it had so much more flavor so sometimes if the black walnut was a large half I just turned it over and gave it a tap that way just took the gentle tap that's all you need to do at this point because it's nice if you don't break the nut me and you just break the shell so just be careful when you're doing it that way so I've used these in the various different type of recipes I fused them in pest oh and I use it in a carrot-raisin salad it does are on my channel but typically I love these in a brownie a black walnut brownie is like the best thing ever so this can be quite a tedious little project here and like I said I probably will not be doing this again but I thought it would be fun to show you how to harvest your black walnuts how to clean them and how to get that nut meat out so feel free to head on over to my channel where I have a playlist and over there I have a recipe section for black walnuts and different ways that I've used them and I'm always adding to my playlist so thank you so much for watching and have a beautiful day [Music] you

Channel: Rainbow Gardens

Views: 167,167

Rating: 4.6824551 out of 5

Keywords: gardening, kitchen garden, how to grow vegetables, how to grow herbs, square foot garden, rainbow gardens, jamie oliver, food tube, flower, container garden, compost, gardenandgun, how to crack black walnuts, how to shell black walnuts, how to clean black walnuts, black walnuts, walnuts, english walnuts, #myfoodmemories, southern cuisine, southerncooking, southern cooking, southern living

Id: 5SqD2gcAfkM

Length: 7min 10sec (430 seconds)

Published: Thu Sep 28 2017