Cracking Black Walnuts and Making Cookie in Appalachia

see that my little gloves will keep your hands warm clean this is my own idea right here because i don't like to mess with them after they're black is that golly i've got a bunch of me look right here in front of you how long does it take them to dry in front of the stove about a week and then you can get them real dry and then you crack them out i said i'm just thrilled i just love to do stuff like this some people wouldn't like it but i do so in the first part of this video you saw granny cracking out our black walnuts granny is crazy about black walnuts i'm crazy about black walnuts too i grew up eating them with granny and pap and it's they're just my favorite nut the black walnut is native to appalachia they grow wild all over the place so that's a common that nut is common in a lot of recipes that you'll find in in appalachia and also just for people to to eat out of hand not so much today as in days gone by because uh in older days like when granny was a girl a lot more people every year they had to worry about their food like today we can i can go to the store and buy black walnuts but in those days you had to actually think about what was what you were going to eat that winter and if you wanted black walnut she wasn't gonna go to the store and buy them you might buy them from some person that cracked them out but mostly you were going to crack them out yourself you know you were going to take that that step and make sure that you had yours for the winter for winter use well black walnut is a really hard nut to deal with first there's that outer layer that hole you saw granny uh which is really unusual that she gets hers off when it's green and some people say that you're not supposed to do that but she's done it like that like she said that was her own invention because she didn't like to get messy and it works out just fine for her most people wait till it starts deteriorating and then it's easier to get off like you seen granny using a hammer then you can basically just pull it off with your hands a lot of people will spread them out like in a in the road or in their yard in a certain area and they'll run over them with their car with a tractor or four-wheeler or something and that'll break those off then once that parts off you have to let them cure you have to let the nut part dry out so like granny was saying she would put hers by her heater and that's another thing that's up for debate a lot of people will tell you they have to cure for a certain amount of time but you can't go past that amount of time well i found that not to be true obviously granny she cures hers for about a week or something in front of the heater and then she just starts cracking them out she can't wait you know um and i've found sometimes when i've been uh lazy and not got all mine cracked out that even past the point that most people would say well those are no good you probably should just throw them away they're still good so that's something that granny and i have found that it's not necessarily what the textbook tells you about black walnuts but speaking of cracking them out so you've seen the handy dandy cracker granny had someone in her family made that far before that when i was growing up i remember granny would use a board out on one side of our house we didn't have a porch or a deck or anything we just had concrete blocks for steps and she'd sit on those steps with a board and she'd crack out walnuts that way she was just so determined to get them out once you crack them open some people use a bobby pin or a little nut pick or different ways of trying to get out the goodie people call that the nut the goodie trying to get the goodie out in a whole piece or the largest piece that you can you know other people would use a vice maybe they would put the walnut in a vise and crank it down until it cracks or you put it in a vise and use a hammer that way so there's vary in different ways um i've seen a few other crackers like grannies that one was made i think for i think from that the part that goes over is the flywheel out of a car like i said her someone in her family made it for her i have one that kenneth roper my dear friend kent roper made me i don't know if you can see it right here it's lovely i'll hold it up here but this part is not out of a car kenneth is a machinist so he made all these parts he even put them on his backside it's even got my name tipper but the nut goes in this part right here and you can adjust on this side to the thickness and then you crank it and it cracks so it works very well kenneth used to after he made mine he sold a few but he's not selling them now but maybe you could find someone that is another way to crack them after i'd wrote about black walnuts a couple of times on the blind pig and the acorn a gentleman sent me a black walnut saw that actually there's a little jig that you put the black walnut in and then you saw around it and it comes out in two pieces now if you go to the blind peak in the acorn and search for that you can you can find that uh the post where i wrote about the saw he gave me and also if you just do a google for a black walnut saw i'm pretty sure he's like he patented he's the only person probably out there making them so you might be able to find one that way and actually purchase one and get it if you'd like one but today i have something really special i'm going to share with you a recipe so this if you can see it this is a recipe that was my husband's great grandmother's her name was dolly and my husband's mother miss cindy shared it with me so this is black walnut cookies well i grew up eating black walnuts and cakes and muffins and bars and things like that and just out of hand like i said but i'd never ate them in cookies until miss cindy shared this recipe for me and she even this is dolly's handwriting and miss cindy even laminated this for me to keep because she knew i loved stuff like that so i'm going to show you how to make dollies black walnut cookies so first we're going to put in 3 4 cup of shortening and i'll leave the link to this recipe in the description below so you don't have to worry about writing it all down as we go and then i have two cups of brown sugar and i'm gonna let that cream for just a few minutes okay the brown sugar and the shortening have creamed together and now i'm gonna i've got two beaten eggs and i'm gonna add the eggs and i'm gonna mix well again okay now i'm going to add a teaspoon of vanilla [Music] and a whole cup of black walnuts okay i have three cups of plain flour or all-purpose flour dolly's recipe actually says pastry flour but i don't i've never had pastry flour so i just use all purpose and it works out fine and to that i'm going to add a half a teaspoon of salt and a half a teaspoon of baking soda to the flour and mix that up good then i have a half a cup of evaporated milk if you don't have evaporated milk you could use heavy whipping cream half and half or even just milk i think would be fine and so i'm gonna i'm gonna take turns i'm gonna put some flour mixture then evaporated milk then flour mixture and then evaporated milk you know you've seen a lot of recipes like that where the cakes where you you alternate between your dry and wet ingredients so we're gonna do that i'm going to start with the flower i'm going to add the rest of the flour and i'm sure you won't be as messy as i am i'm pretty messy sometimes now that the dough's done i'm going to drop them by rounded teaspoons well you could use whatever size you want i use a teaspoon but if you wanted larger cookies use a larger spoon if you want smaller cookies use you know something smaller or half a teaspoon or whatever you'd like we're going to drop them onto a greased cookie sheet and we're going to bake them at 400 degrees for about 7 to 10 minutes my advice is always to watch the cookies the first round at least really closely in your oven so then you know what how long it takes in your oven ovens vary from place to place so from house to house i should say so keep a good watch on them the first time you make them and then you'll know but in my oven it takes about seven minutes another thing about this dough that is really handy that dolly had not noted on her handwritten recipe was that if you don't want to make all the cookies in one day or maybe you want to make the dough ahead of time and then have fresh cookies when company comes is that you can put the dough in the refrigerator and then just use it as needed i'm gonna put these in the oven now i just got the cookies out of the oven they're so good i think i'm gonna take some down to granny and share with her and i'm gonna be sure to take some to miss cindy tomorrow so that she can taste them since this was her grandmother dolly's recipe they're so good but before i leave you i want to tell you one more story about cracking walnuts you know john paris is one of my favorite writers of appalachia he focused primarily on western north carolina and what i'm going to share with you today is just a little excerpt from a piece that he wrote about a man george smathers in haywood county well i especially like it because it's about black walnuts but i also especially like it because george smathers lived in the same area where my husband the deer hunter matt where he was raised up in the dutch cove of canton in haywood county so this is the champion walnut cracker was the name of the piece that i'm gonna um i'm just gonna read you a little portion of it though the old man sat in a split bottom straight back chair cracking out walnuts with a hammer on a locust stump in the front of his woodshed the preacher down at morningstar calls me the champion walnut cracker of haywood county he said that's what he told me and i don't guess anybody else does crack as many walnuts george smathers grinned and his eyes twinkled there's one thing for a fact he said you won't find a walnut cracker as old as me i'm just nine months away from being a hundred years old the oldest man that ever lived in the dutch cove got in the walnut cracking business about seven or eight years ago so i'd have me a little extra spending money the women folks around here and down at canton they take all i can crack out they put them in their christmas cakes there's nothing finer than a walnut cake i generally sell about 40 pounds of walnut meat a year i cracked out 50 pounds last fall i figure on knocking out 40 or 50 pounds this year got 3.75 cents a pound last year but i'm gonna get four dollars this year or i'm not selling them i'll just throw them all away i don't figure that's too high what with all the work that goes into it you have to go out and go hunting all over the country for walnuts then you gotta hull them then you gotta dry them and then you gotta crack them if it wasn't for have some having something to pass off my time i wouldn't bother with them so you can see why george smathers was the champion cracker of haywood county sure sounds like he was maybe even the champion walnut cracker all over 40 pounds that's a lot of walnuts takes a lot of walnuts to make 40 pounds that's almost unbelievable i hope you've enjoyed this little video about black walnuts especially dolly's recipe if you try it out i hope you'll enjoy it but mostly i just hope you'll drop back by often as i celebrate appalachia

Channel: Celebrating Appalachia

Views: 27,845

Keywords: black walnut tree, black walnut benefits, black walnut leaves, black walnut nuts, black walnut edible, black walnut vs walnuts, black walnut harvesting, black walnut recipes, how to crack black walnuts, how to use black walnuts, Appalachia, Appalachian Mountains, Best cookies, Black Walnut Cookies, Black Walnut cookie recipe, Black Walnut icebox cookies, Black Walnut drop cookies, Black walnut drop cookie recipe, old fashioned black walnut cookies, how to process black walnuts

Id: wbj4047p_L4

Length: 14min 47sec (887 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 22 2020