We used to get them from a friend who had trees. I loved them as a teen. But, yeah, shelling and cleaning them probably takes as much energy as you get from eating the nutmeat. I just use an old fashioned squeeze nutcracker and picks. I've heard that a screw style nutcracker works best on them. Be careful with the squeeze type that the pointy end isn't facing your hand. They bite!

Walnut butter is amazing, but takes an awful lot. Great thing to do if you have a lot of broken pieces. The flavor is delicate, however, though can be a bit sour or bitter, and the flesh is pretty soft. You can lightly toast them to dry and crisp them, but the flavor is best plain and raw. Halves make a nice decoration around an Autumn cake. Whole make nice little "brains" for Halloween.

Something nice, but needing to be eaten right away, is a kind of salad. Diced walnuts, pears, the green parts of scallions or chives, spices, marinated pink peppercorns. The nuts will get soggy, however, so really need not to sit in the wet too long.

Black walnuts (not English) have a strong flavor and people seem to either love them or hate them. I grew up with them in cookies, candies and desserts and love them. That said, they are a lot of work to crack and pick, so you have to prize them for it to be worth the effort. We always cracked with a hammer on concrete and then used regular picks/pickers. I don't think you could crack with the hand held sqeeze or screw devices.

edited to say: if you decide you like the taste, come back for recipes.

I have a huge butternut nut tree, 80 foot tall. Every year I get a ton of nuts. When I do my gardening duties I need to wear a construction hardhat. When one of those nuts hit you from 80 feet. Ouch!!!

Yeah, lots of work for little meat to shell them. But I am working on a machine that may help.

Besides eating the meat from my nut tree, I also tap the tree for syrup. Every year I can get two or three bottles. Delicious. I think you can tap black walnut tree also.

.dcarch

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To be clear, when I said the flavor was delicate, I meant that it doesn't, IMHO, stand up to a lot of competition. As Lizbeth said, it's a strong flavor as in present and distinctive.

Somehow I think Pilllog is not acquainted with midwestern and eastern black walnuts. The california black walnut is different.

Black walnuts are the devil to shell, but delicious if you can get a kid to do thew ork....very assertive flavor, delicious in fudge, or brownies and especially in a black walnut cake with burnt sugar frosting. As for decorating with halves, I have never seen a half a black walnut nutmeat. You crack them with a hammer and pick the meat out with a nut pick, in bits and pieces.

The old timers would spread them on the drive and then runover them a few times with the car to remove the husk, store the nuts for winter evening nut pickin'.

True. I'm not acquinted with Midwestern anything. The black walnuts I know well were grown inland in California, near the San Diego border. They're not easy to shell whole, but one can learn the trick. Getting the bits of inner shell out of them is another story. They have a heck of a lot more flavor than other kinds. If they're different from what y'all have in the East, never mind. ;)

Thanks all. I shelled a few last night and stuck them in my dehydrator. I think I will hull another pile and leave them to dry. Food that is a PIA to harvest and unusual is right up my alley.

I would love to try butternuts as well. I hear they are delicious. And there are some elusive mythic ones in the area. My mom has epic adventurous memories of the past but isn’t always clear quite how long ago it was. My window sills are butternut.

Butternut andw alnut are closely related....and frankly hard to tell apart boh in the nuts and in the tree.

@agmss15, FWIW, I remembered this recipe from one of my Silver Palate Cookbooks.

Lemon Black Walnut Bread
Makes 2 loaves

2 sticks butter, softened
1 1/2 cups granulated sugar
4 eggs, separated
2/3 cup fresh lemon juice
2 T. lemon zest
3 cups cake flour
4 tsp. baking powder
1 cup milk
Pinch of salt
1 cup shelled black walnuts, chopped
1/4 cup water

Preheat oven to 350. Butter 2 loaf pans (9x5x3) with 3 T. of the butter.

In mixing bowl cream remaining butter and 1 cup of the sugar. Beat in egg yolks, one at a time, then stir in 1/3 cup of lemon juice and zest.

Combine cake flour with baking powder. Add one third of the flour mixture to the creamed butter and sugar. Then add half of milk, another third of flour, remaining milk and remaining flour. Do not overmix.

In another bowl beat egg whites and pinch of salt together until stiff but not dry. Fold beaten egg whites and walnuts gently into batter.

Pour batter into prepared pans. Bake on middle rack of oven for 45-50 minutes or until cake tester comes out clean.

Cool bread slightly, remove from pans and cool completely on a rack.

Boil remaining 1/3 cup of lemon juice, water and remaining 1/2 cup sugar together in small saucepan for 2 minutes.

Drizzle lemon syrup over tops of cooled loaves and let them set until completely cool.

Thanks!

I will see how obsessed I get. I am getting ready to be done with piles of food projects all over my house.

If you like the taste of black walnuts you can put them in most any baked good that calls for nuts. Such as fudge, cookies, quick breads, cakes, etc. I wouldn't substitute them for pecans or English walnuts in green salads.

Dcarch: They make crackers just for black walnuts-Amaz** sells them. I think I have a hand made one in the basement.

Or leave them for the squirrels!

https://www.autoblog.com/2021/09/30/squirrel-fills-truck-walnuts/?icid=autoblog|trend|squirrel-stashes-42-gallons-of-walnuts-in-a-chevrolet-avalanche

Emmy on youtube recommended this one. The site looks untended so I am not sure what the status of the company is....

http://www.masternutcracker.com/

The ratchet on that one looks excellent! Most of that configuration only have a direct lever. Here's a version of the screw type. https://www.amazon.com/Anwenk-Stainless-Nutcracker-Macadamia-Hazelnut/dp/B07KF88JB7/ref=sr_1_56?dchild=1&keywords=nut+cracking+tools&pd_rd_r=6318257c-945c-44f2-89e6-f4293275bb3e&pd_rd_w=ZFaMM&pd_rd_wg=Yv1PW&pf_rd_p=4fa0e97a-13a4-491b-a127-133a554b4da3&pf_rd_r=0CZ6T9XH2W6G3MV9XQB4&qid=1633287538&sr=8-56

Mine is similar to the one you posted, agmiss. I think the screw type would be harder to use.

I absolutely love black walnuts, but have not lived anywhere they grow for many years. When I was a kid, we would make a trip to California about once a year. One of the things there that mom made to sure stock up on and bring back were as many black walnuts as there was room for in the car. Haven't been back to California in a very long time. Mom did add them to cakes, cookies, etc. We all loved them.

Years ago I worked at a museum that had a vintage black walnut sheller. If I had one of those, I might consider it worth the trouble. Otherwise, no . . . not at this juncture. I'm sure a hammer on concrete might work, but one by one kind of time consuming, even running over with car, still have to pick out nutmeat and also sort out buggy ones . . . but with FB being down, maybe I can find the time! (Joking! I have a huge garden with tasks if I get bored . . . which I don't).

Black Walnuts - Are they worth it? No!

The best use of black walnuts I've seen was watching the crows from my office window, drop them in the middle of the intersection and wait for cars to run them over so they could get to the nut. Kind of an amazing adaptation.

My DIY motorized nut cracker.

dcarch

I think some may have a different variety of walnut, the ones appearing here are almost the size of a tennis ball with the husks on and no crow could pick it up, and the interior so convoluted that no way will half a nut meat be extracted. And don't try to grow tomatoes or petunias anywhere within the reach of black walnut tree roots, they will just up and die. But the nuts are delicious, if you have patience!

https://honest-food.net/black-walnuts-and-holiday-cheer/

The crows can get the nuts out of the husks, they just cannot hold them to crack the shell. I also saw them carry the nuts up onto the roof of the house next door and wedge them against the vent cover, so they couldn't roll. Then they pecked at them until they got them open. Wasn't easy but they were determined and persistent.

For sure I've never seen the tennis balls!

They’re like tennis balls here both in size and color when the husks are fresh — the squirrels bury them in my potted plants every autumn. I do not care for the taste, but they make excellent dye for my baskets!

eta: a friend’s father sells the nut meats every year… he uses his car and runs over them to crack them open.

I just remembered that my father used to make wooden frames, covered with screens, and he'd layer the nuts on the screens-- with husks still on -- and leave them in the attic to dry. After they were dry, he'd crack them open with a hammer.

It finally comes together now that the rain has passed--the friends with the trees had removed the husks. hence no softballs. I was agog since I'm used to the black walnuts being smaller than the other kind.

Well here the black walnuts with the husks removed are still larger than English walnuts....and much bumpier, and the shell is harder and doesn't divide in half like English walnuts do

Yeah, that blog you linked said there were two species in California that are different from the ones East of the Rockies. Same here about the don't divide in half. We'd crack them as in make cracks in the shells, and kind of pick and peel away the shells, but there was a way you had to hold them because they'd separate and pinch a bit of skin, and wouldn't let go. Someone would have to put pressure to open the crack to get you out of it. Only kids had the time to bother with them! Getting a whole piece was the ne plus ultra, but pretty darned rare.

Black walnuts matter.

I think black walnuts should be lucky. I found a hulled but whole black walnut on my porch yesterday. lol! Those rats with fluffy tails do it. One year I found peaches all over my porch and all around my garage doors. :)

Nope, definitely not worth it. I don't like them, and we have trees everywhere. If you hit a fallen walnut with the lawnmower it turns into a missile that will break windows.

Here they are about tennis ball size while the husks are still on them, dark and smaller than a walnut when the husks are removed. The husks are green when they fall off the tree, but eventually darken and turn brown. The juice will stain your hands for weeks.

We used to pick them up in 5 gallon buckets and dump them in the driveway, then drive over them until the husks came off. Then we picked them up and cracked them. Dad made a small indentation in a board and I would place a nut in the indentation and smack it with a hammer until it broke into pieces. They never broke in half. Then Dad would sit with a pick and pick the nutmeats out and store them in glass canning jars in the freezer. We were never patient enough to get more than a couple of jars, and that was a 5 gallon bucket full plus some. Mother loved black walnut fudge.

Now I pay the kids to pick them up and I dump them into the ravine on the back of the property. The squirrels can have them, I don't want them.

We did have a butternut tree, but it became hollow and I had it cut down. That's when I learned that they have the same chemical in the roots as black walnut does, the stuff that hampers growth of other plants. And that's why my rhubarb never grew, I planted it too close to the butternut tree. Now the tree is gone, the rhubarb is flourishing. The butternuts were just as difficult to harvest as the black walnuts.

Annie