For Love of Nuts

October’s the time when people with black walnut trees gripe about the mess. If I dumped a pile of money in your yard, would you complain?

In the Midwest, black walnuts are big business. Many people don’t like eating them straight (like other wild foods, they are strongly-flavored), but they make very popular desserts. The Hammons Products Company buys 25 million pounds of black walnuts a year, mostly from people just cleaning up their yard.

Maybe money grows on trees after all. Here is how to turn your neighbor’s trash into your treasure.

Black walnuts fall in a husk that starts hard and green, turns soft and black, and then dries out and rots away. Until then, that black husk makes a great natural dye. For that reason, it will also stain your hands temporarily, so you can either wear gloves or enjoy a free Halloween-worthy henna job.

Black walnuts husks also often contain dozens of little grubs. If the black staining isn’t enough to turn most people off, this flips the switch. Yet these are some of the tastiest grubs I’ve eaten — and I’ve had my share.

Collect black walnuts once they’ve fallen from the tree. Skip ones with thin, dry, green husks, and last year’s crop, which have no husk left at all. Those are either duds or rotten.

If you have time, you can husk them by hand on the spot. When necessary, smacking them once with a short board or rock will break the husk enough to make it easily removable. This is far easier than stomping on them, or – and people really do this – putting them in the driveway to be run over by cars. What runs over instead are all the squirrels to get them.

Put your collection in a container sealed from the competition, like a garbage can. Let them rot until they are all soft and black. This usually takes about three weeks. It’s fine if they get a little moldy.

Now it’s time for the “washing machine.” Put on some clothes you don’t mind staining. Grab a five-gallon bucket; a milk crate, basket, or anything else you can strain water through; and something to serve as a paddle. A short shovel with a handle like this one works well; so does a narrow plastic rake I happened to have. Even a board will work. To understand what all this is for, keep reading.

Set yourself up near an outdoor faucet and fill the bucket about 25% with nuts. Add an inch more water than needed to cover the nuts and bring to a boil (just kidding). Stick in your “paddle” and turn it vigorously back and forth about twenty times. Something you can plunge up and down is even easier. Improvise! Just be ready to get your pants splashed with black, staining water.

Dump nuts into the crate or basket, then repeat. If you want, you can give them a final rinse.

If you somehow get plenty of exercise already, instead of the paddle, you can substitute an electric drill with a paint mixer attachment or a larger drill with a concrete mixer attachment.

It’s always beautiful and miraculous to me when out of the black water come these shiny brown nuggets. The lesson: don’t judge a nut by its cover!

They will still be mostly black (hence the name), but will otherwise look like a more macho version of walnuts from the store. Remember, the nuts don’t have to be completely husk-free. As long as they don’t have chunks of husk on them, they’ll be fine.

Spread nuts out to dry in a single layer for several weeks. The shell (on the outside) must be completely dry before storing. I can’t stress this enough. Once you think they are dry, wait another two weeks. Even then, they must be stored in an unsealed container or they will probably mold.

Probably the hardest part of processing black walnuts is finding a space to do this. This is no joke: if you leave your hard-earned nuts outside, it’s not the rain you have to worry about. Your neighbors have no respect for private enterprise.

Not long ago, I left my walnuts temporarily on the front porch in a big plastic tub with a locking lid, the heavy-duty travel kind. Within half an hour, squirrels had chewed a hole in the lid.

That was impressive, but after all, squirrels chew through the shells themselves. You don’t want to go up against one of these nutters in hand-to-tooth combat.

Of course, if you have a small gun, you can eat the competition.

Speaking of rodents, mice and rats can also get to your nuts indoors, so the best solution is to finish the job quickly with a dehydrator. Or you can put the nuts in the oven on the lowest setting with the door cracked open. Either way, it will take at least overnight, and the temperature must stay below 110 or so degrees or the nuts may split open.

Nuts that have been sitting out for weeks may be cured already. Otherwise, they should ideally sit for a month or two to cure, otherwise they may taste somewhat “green.” For storage, I have a 55-gallon tub that I’ve cut a “window” in and added a metal screen so the nuts can get some ventilation. Ones I have placed in an open plastic bag in this tub have still molded.

Even when properly dried, a few nuts will mold anyway. These are ones that were rotten inside to begin with. In fact, it’s not unusual for ten percent of your nuts to come out rotten. Just return them to the store.

Now comes the slowest part. A regular English walnut cracker is powerless against this force of Nature. For many years, I just used a hammer. Then I bought a heavy-duty cracker. I tried the Potter and Kenkel crackers and was pretty dissatisfied. Even the Hunt was not ideal. Grandpa’s Goodie Getter works best for me, but “Mr. Hickory” (see figure) also works well and is cheaper and far more portable.

The other tool to get is a pair of small but high-quality long-nose wire cutters. These work incredibly well for slicing right through nut shell. Just remember, they work even better on your fingers.

Notice that I called this the slowest part, not the “most tedious.” This is indeed the kind of work that gets boring quick when you’re doing it alone, hence the Slap Chop:

On the other hand, this is the perfect activity to do while hanging out with friends or sitting through meetings. And like forager Brad Spivey says, just think of the hundred years or more the tree took to grow and the time you spend may not seem so long after all.

Now comes my favorite part: removing any bits of shell from the nut meats. This takes a keen eye and some familiarity with the slightly more pink color of shell shards. If you miss any, these CAN cut gums or even break teeth; I’ve seen it happen.

Finally, I soak the nut meats to make them far more digestible. I use plenty of water and add a big pinch of salt. After a night on the kitchen counter, move them into the fridge. You can strain out the meats and dry them in a dehydrator, pat them dry and let them finish drying out in an open container, or just leave them in the water. I have no need to dry out the nuts since I never use them dry anyway.

On that note, I highly recommend using the soaking water. It is very flavorful! Don’t worry, you’re not soaking out a toxin, you are just deactivating an enzyme inhibitor.

I’m sure it sounds like these nuts take a lot of processing, but so does any serious relationship. Learn to love your life: the process more than the product. Like Cheri Huber says, “when you fall in love with someone, you don’t say, ‘oh, no, how long am I going to have to love this person?‘ When we’re in love, we love to love that person, and we hope it will last forever.”

Each time you’re done cracking some nuts, you usually have only a handful to show for it. But what would you rather have, ten $100 bills or 100 dollar bills? One black walnut has more nutrition than ten from the store. And the one you process yourself is priceless.

Rumi says the rose’s essence is in the thorn. The walnut’s essence is in the shell. This is the secret of life. Now get crackin!

An earlier version of this article appeared in The Epoch Times on 10/31/18.