My grandmother had a black walnut tree. She said they were not really ripe until the outer husk turned black. She said that the "walnut stain" from handling walnuts with a black husk was REALLY hard to get out. (Thus is was used to make a natural dye or stain.) Here's the good part. My grandmother had a pair of walnut shoes! She kept them in a storage space the put them on when she was going to go harvest her black walnuts. She would roll the walnuts with her foot and crumble all the black husk off before washing the resulting nuts with the hose or a pan of warm water. Drained, she would put all the walnuts in a bushel basket, which lived on the stairs from the first floor to the second and any time Grandma needed some walnuts for cooking she would crack enough for the recipe and no more. The walnuts in the shell kept indefinitely.
When I was a kid my grandparents had a black walnut tree in the yard. If I remember correctly my grandfather would fill a barrel with the nuts and water and let them soak for a few days to loosen the husks. Then he would spill the nuts out on the driveway, beat the hell out of them and hose them off to remove the husks. Unfortunately I might be remembering it wrong since the tree died when I was about 7, so it's been about 40 years. I do remember the family spending hours shelling the nuts for some the dishes my grandmother would make for Christmas.
these are not ripen enough. In the ripen process, the green shell becomes black and thin and then it cracks and falls off then the nuts fall off the tree and they are ready to eat. when we were kids we liked to eat them before ripen, we peeled the middle until it was white and it was very soft and juicy. I had a walnut tree in my front yard, I have lots of memories with this king of walnuts 😊
I second this black walnuts are fully ripe once the husk becomes dry and desiccated. They will stain your hands at that point so wear gloves but they are easier to de husk.
I agree. I wonder if this might be a case of reading about a process and seeing a process. When we used "dry" to refer to BW back on the farm, it meant the outer husk was dry. He's not yet had a proper walnut.
I study black walnuts for my master's thesis and have been working with them for 2 years. There's a lot variety in how they ripen. Some fall off the tree fully green, fully soft, and definitely ripe. Others stay clinging onto to the tree basically rotting the fruit to black. At my lab we determine ripeness simply when the fruit begins to soften like a pear that is ready to eat. So far, that metric has served well.
@@theforestgardener4011 Really? Ours was like the commenter described. It seemed weird seeing a green one "gathered." I love the flavor (especially with maple syrup on ice cream!).
I know I'm commenting almost five years later, from February 14th, 2016 to December 1st, 2020, however: My dad used to get paper grocery bags full of black walnuts from one of his coworkers, throw them across the limestone gravel driveway and drive the car over them to loosen the husks. Then us kids got the task of removing those husks, which stained our hands brown for a month or so. Then he would crack them open using his woodworking vice, and we would dig out the nut meats. We would use them to make black walnut ice cream in an old crank freezer, it was delicious. I don't remember ever finding any bad ones, or squirrels trying to steal them, either. Now, I go to the store and buy a bag of black walnuts (definitely worth my time and effort), and make a pie with them, using the pecan pie recipe on the dark Kayro syrup bottle. It makes a delicious pie. Thanks, Weird Explorer, for bringing back some warm, fond memories!
Just stumbled across this channel, interesting. As a child we collect walnuts as an end of summer activity. We would collect the fallen nuts and put them in a tied large burlap sack and run over them several times with the truck to de-husk, drop the whole sack into a tub of water to wash off the pigments (get that on you and it be there forever, careful where you dump the water, the dyes are toxic to fish), spread them to dry then use vice grip pliers to crack them open (we would sometimes use the bearing press if pliers were in short supply).
Tried my first black walnut today, I've been accustomed to the trees ever since I was a little kid with them in my back yard. The one I had today I stored in my shed last year and forgot all about, so they were black, the hulls were dry, and came off easy by stepping on them on concrete and doing a little twist! I scrubbed it and it did float but I opened it with the help of wire cutters and the nut meat was perfectly intact! Raw they tasted somewhat sweet, mildly reminding me of pecans, and of course English walnuts. Toasted however brought out a distinctive "blueberry pastry" flavor with a touch of bitterness and toasty-ness. They were good but I still much prefer wild pecans
It's a unique flavor. I love black walnut ice cream. It's also good in the confection known as divinity. Luckily these are more available now processed than when I was a kid and had the sad chore of hulling them.
Braum's used to carry it, but it may have been seasonal. I used to order a brownie fudge sundae , which had either chocolate or vanilla ice cream. and switch it out with black walnut. Bluebell ice cream made this flavor too, but after they had to shut down for a while, they stopped stocking that brand in Missouri. I noticed this year that Sam's Club had shelled black walnuts in a two pound bag for under $20, which is a good deal, so I'm going to try making the ice cream with those and some black walnut extract I found on Amazon. I hope you get to try it sometime!
My husband, a botanist, is obsessed with black walnuts. He has a whole husking and cracking setup. I think they taste like english walnuts with overtones of black cherry and walnut wood.
Our Black Walnuts here in Arkansas are the size of a tennis ball when fully ripe but still green. They shrink to about the size of your first one when they dry up and turn brown. They are very common here, and fruit super-abundantly. That first one you are tasting is definitely not ripe. The inner shell is commercially ground up for abrasive material. The hardness is incredible! A special heavy-duty steel nutcracker with a long handle and a geared ram is made for cracking them so they don't explode all over the place.
My grandfather made his on walnut stain using these! After they turn black he would put them in a coffee can with mineral spirits and let them steep for a few weeks. Cheap and readily available. They were way too much trouble to try to harvest them to eat but they are delicious if you do.
You should totally do a Shagbark Hickory review. They often grow where Black Walnuts do and are literally my favorite wild nut. Nothing beats aged and roasted shagbark hickory nuts.
You are VERY mistaken about the black walnut! You don not want to touch them when they are green! After they fall from the tree, you remove the black husk (use gloves) and crack the ripe nut.
Jared if you can find a Russian, Polish, Georgian, etc. store- or any store that sells food stuff from this region- they actually pick these when they are very small and green- the size of a large olive- and they preserve them in a kind of spiced syrup like candied fruits- green husk and all... they are soft when they are this small and are truly delicious! I know from living in France we ate green walnuts in the fall- these would come out in the markets for about a week or two at the beginning of harvest and they were welcomed as a sort of harbinger of autumn. (I think the ones in France were not black walnuts. ) Also note (if you haven't noticed already) that the green husk has stuff in it that with turn anything it comes into contact with black. In the 18th and 19th centuries they used these to dye fabrics...
In Romania we make a jam with whoole green walnuts .Its the most expensive jam at the supermarket and the best tasting jam ive eated so far.The walnuts that are used are normal Carpathian Walnuts but cultivars that make the smallest nuts(the trees are like dwarf walnuts-somme are cultivated in Spain).The outer shell of the walnut tastes somewhat like lemon ;We also eat fresh raw green walnuts immediatly after they get ripe-we eat only the kernel not the shell and kernel like in the jam.When they are green,the paper like cover comes off from the kernel easily and that tissue contains all the bitterness the walnuts have.
A long time ago I was working at a health food store and a lady brought in some Georgian baby black walnut jam. The country Georgia, not the state. The black walnuts were the size of store bought maraschino cherries. The flavor was spiced. They were soft with good texture. Pretty good.
When I was a kid my dad would take us to gather buckets full of these and then dump them on our gravel driveway. Our cars would drive over them removing the green outside and the he would dry them out near the woodstove. Then you take a hammer to them and enjoy 😊
We had an English walnut orchard when I was a kid, and we would wait until the husks turned black. The nuts inside were just fine. You could gather hundreds off the ground in a few minutes and have the husks off. We'd crack them on a rock and eat them pretty easily. Black walnuts seem like a lot more work.
The "husk" can be used to make wood dyes. Different metal will give (copper, aluminium, steel) will give different colours. You can even do ink with a good recipe. It will be sepia colour.
Nostalgia is right. There was a calm street by the river, alongside a park, that had a bunch of these trees hanging over said street. I remember walking through them and kicking them around. The musky aroma of them brings back so many pleasant fall evenings.
I live in the Ozark mountains of northwestern Arkansas, and we got rocks. Boy do we got rocks! Oh, and also black walnuts. The acrid odor in that outer husk is tannins that smell like iodine. That's probably why some assumed the nuts were poisonous. They TASTE WEIRD, but they are not poisonous. They make a great addition to ice cream! That rock-hard inner shell is ground up and used as a polishing compound.
Hey Jared love your videos, I have been more confident in buying different fruits because of your reviews, so thankyou. Also little tip on how to crack open fresh nuts especially the walnuts. Don't know if anyone has mentioned this but we would take a small chisel and hammer(ones that you would use for crafting) and gently crack it open that way. Another way is if you get frustrated with the nut...just put it in a sock and hit it against the wall or floor and it will crack open and the bonus part is all the shells and mess will stay in the sock...lol
We have a tree in my back yard. Hate them during autumn because I cannot walk in my yard without rolling my ankle. Just an FYI it can but used as a natural dye for fabrics or wood stain. Put black walnuts in a bucket and store them in a dark place. They will start to make almost like an oil... you can dye basically about anything with it.
kaylyn delaney I agree on the ankle rolling, got to be very careful. If you do a little research, you can get the procedures for harvesting them. Look in stores and they are sold already shelled at a huge price. I h a ve many trees but don't bother with them. Here, you can also collect them and sell them for someone else to process.
When you hit a nut with a hammer, put the nut in that round hole in your cutting board and then hit it. The nut will be less likely to bounce all over the room. The ouside husks of walnuts are used for dye-- yellows, browns, or greens, depending on what mordant you use with thr walnut dye.
We used a vise when I was a kid. That way you can crack them just enough. And knew to wear gloves when pulling the husks off. My dad once brought home bags and bags from someone at work and my brother and I had to process them.
The native American lore says that the chemicals in them are good at removing intestinal parasites. I had a dog that came to me as a stray & he was obsessed with chewing these up. Amazingly, he had NO heartworms & few intestinal parasites! RIP BARE NEKID! Best dog ever
Katie Kane I’ve seen starlings rub bits the green hulls under their wings and flop around on the hulls that cars have run over and smashed. I think they were doing it because the acid in the shells kill or repel mites.
Just a tip. Wrap the dried nuts in a bag of some sort, then use a hammer so the pieces don't fly everywhere. Most people who do black walnuts regularly collect a bushel, let them ripen, and get a cracking machine to do the larger volumes... you can also sell the shells if you grind them down... the powder is a choice item for bullet shell polishing.
You'll have a lot better luck cracking them outside on the sidewalk. My mother could get rid of me for a whole afternoon by getting me to crack out a cup of nuts for cookies.
The rest is all over my apartment. Lol Love your videos, usually because I add to my fruit eating bucket list, but this one has the added benefit of being hilarious. If you run out of fruit you may need to move into weird veggies so you can keep going. :)
I was waiting for the cutting board to break. I cracked a coconut to n a wood cutting board once... The Coconut won, and was unharmed. Nice wood cutting board broke into three pieces.
The one good thing with fruit... is there is a lot of it. At the moment I have an entire years worth of fruit footage with no signs of stopping. So hopefully it'll be a while before I turn to veggies. :)
+Amber Wood-Hurst My cutting board also lost; I just didn't show that part. Watch the video again and you'll notice the cutting board I crack the fresh nut on is different than the one I used to crack the dry one on. oops.
Keet Randling lol actually never had it from there a little elderly man used to run a little mom and pop ice cream and Italian Ice place and we used to have it there.
Lol, you're supposed to let the husk turn black, then it'll come off easily and you only have to crack the nut. Also, it's easier to crack them if you hold the nut with a pair of pliers, then smack it with a hammer, just enough to crack it.
I use a large vise to crack them. There are different varieties, some with more meat than others. The kind I've eaten are 95% hull and 5% meat. You'd starve to death if you had to live off them. You'd burn more calories getting the meat out than you would get from eating them.
When they are still soft they are supposed to be pickled and given time before they are ready to be eaten. A small jar prepared correctly is pretty pricey, but to understand how they are supposed to taste it may be worth trying.
I made wood projects out of black walnut and tiger maple. Trolls sit down shh. Chess sets to up to many large projects. Made most for my Mom. My Gramma had a huge black walnut tree. We both cried when it was felled. This is a novel and not the correct forum. Kid keep up the great work.
Every year when I was young my family would pick up black walnuts that had fallen from the tree. I always had black hands from husking them. I did this outside, though. Then used one of Dad's hammers to crack them, and a nut pick to get them out. Mom would put them in chocolate fudge at Christmas time. It was very good.
My grandmother would dry these in her basement every year. The black does not mean they are bad, the more dried out the outer husk is, the better they are. We used to crack them in a vise, it was easier than pounding them. A good nut will have a slight musky flavor with a sweetness underneath. Bad ones are usually dried up and black. The husks can be used to make a brown dye. Some people will run over them with their car tires to get the husks off easier. They are a bit time consuming, but worth it.
I grew up with black walnut trees in my yard, so I ate them all the time as a kid. My go-to method for cracking them was to hold the nut with pliers and crack it with a hammer on the cement patio. The people who told you they were poisonous may have been confused because the tree's roots produce a toxin that can harm plants that grow close to it. Tomatoes and peppers are particularly affected and can't be grown within a few hundred feet of a black walnut tree.
Parents usually tell their kids anything that grows on trees or in the forest is poisonous just to be safe. (Which isn’t true). I was told that the red berries growing on trees were poisonous and only birds could eat them. It probably wasn’t true either.
i recently tried harvesting some black walnuts, it went okay i had like 5 bad ones out of a large bucket. i have in infestations of black walnuts in my yard like they take of half the tree population and it all started from one large tree. plus u forgot they have a rather strong scent to them
lol finally I know how other people feel when you try "weird" fruit that is common in their country. We have these (and other walnut varieties) everywhere here in Slovakia and neighboring countries.
Every time I see one of the videos with this opening I feel like I'm about to see a '70s Pubic Access documentary on some Appalachian hill-folk struggling to survive after the mine closed.
They sell special nut crackers for black walnuts, big lever and they mount to a sturdy workbench. I had a a fresh black walnut two years ago and it was like it was soaked in turpentine, barely edible, I only had one though so couldn't try roasting to drive off those volatile compounds. It was a tree I planted 10 years ago, a nursery mixup was not supposed to be black walnut tree.
I hold the black walnut with thumb and finger on stump or anvil and hammer the nut, a little more gently than you were doing. That way it doesn't fly everywhere and comes out more intact. Best method comes with practice. I find that black or green, they are nearly always good, but develop best flavour after ripening in husk until dry.
A method I've used to dry hazelnuts may work to dry them out. Only works with a gas oven, though. I just put them into big foil lasagna pans and set them in the oven with just the pilot light on. Works a treat
Maple nut ice cream is usually made with black walnuts. I find them delicious. An oil can be processed from the hulls (not the shell) that kills nail fungus without toxicity.
I remember a friend of mine on the bus with a 50 pound sack of these. He was thrilled! I'd do it for fun but I'd have to do it all with gloves and give away the nutmeats. He gave me a recipe for using the outer and inner shell or something to make a nice dye, but I forgot it.
That green one is definitely not ripe enough. The inside should be black and stain everything dark yellow. We have these all over town here in Ohio. They're really fun to crush by driving over them. 😃
Here in Upstate New York, black walnut trees are grown at the corner of roads, and along side roads and it's common courtesy to run the fallen nuts over with your car, so the land owner can collect the nuts from the crushed hulls.
The black walnut is highly edible and delicious. I ate black walnuts because we had a couple of trees. The only problem is fighting the squirrels for nuts ans don't eat the green skin on the outside. I believe that green skin is used as a dye. It will most certainly stain your clothes for good. The taste is great. Much nicer than store bought walnuts. They are extremely tough to get into. We used hammers with a hard swing.
There's a few around my apartment, some seem to have some ratio of hybridization as they are more mild and MUCH less hard while others are definetly 100% black walnut. Also I highly suggest using them in baking like brownies! So much better than English walnuts with chocolate
When it’s ripe it yields like a green mango, also try using the hole in your cutting board to stabilize the nut. Using a bench vise is the easiest way.
For YEARS I've had the weirdest memory turned strange dream of this fist sized(as a small child) weird green, turning black in parts, ball that kind of looked like a fruit of some kind. I'd never really known what it was(I thought it was some kind of fungus) until now! It has to have been a black walnut!
Stealth Trees when I was very young, my reward for picking up all the black walnuts from my grandmother's tree was eating as many as I wanted. I'd collect a brown grocery bag's worth and crack and munch away. I developed an allergy eventually.
One more comment, there is a sort of little gear looking thing over on the right bottom side side of the screen that controls the speed of the video. I usually speed it up and it makes the video not so long. I know the Explorer is being thoughtful so it takes a while to decide what to say. I have been subscribed for a while and I like what I see. Thanks
Here in Cali we have California Black Walnut's they are rich in flavor and oil content but smaller then regular black walnut's and heard to shell, plus they stain everything brown.
Ha they told you they were poisonous?! :-) We used to buy black walnut candy when we were kids. The black ones are a lot easier to deal with and they’re fine. In Arkansas I’ve seen people have sort of a rotating cylinder “cage” out of 1/4” wire and load them in. As the skin softens, you turn the cylinder every few days and the softened skin falls away. The flavor gets better as they dry just like regular walnuts. They should be really fragrant. Like hickory nuts, shelling them is indeed a lot easier with a rock on the sidewalk. I gathered a big bag this fall and had them in a bag on the back porch...and the squirrels came and took every last one. :-). The crows also love them, and in season you’ll see them dropping the fruits into the street and waiting for cars to drive over them and crush them, then swoop in and eat them before the next car comes along.
To break them open, Get 2 hammers. Put the flat spot on the side of the first hammer (the middle) on top of the nut. Whack the 1st hammer with the 2nd. You force the shell to crush rather than shatter.
My grandmother made cakes from them. The squirrels around here get them before anyone else. I've made tincture from the leaves. They are astringent and anti viral.
I have a giant black walnut tree and I just eat a whole ton of them lol but they stain your hands, that's why they are sometimes used for dye (the yellow liquid on the husk)
Hammond's black walnuts sells shelled black walnuts. They are about $10/ lb. Black walnuts have a unique taste. What you are at approximately appear to be past prime.
idk if this was the case back when you filmed this but the processed nutmeats are commercially available from Fisher and probably other brands as well.
As someone from Missouri I am shocked by how much you missed out on with black walnuts there in N.Y.C. Poisonous? The black husks are poisonous. They also create a very beautiful wood stain on furniture. We use black walnuts in a lot of deserts. Carrot cake should have some black walnuts in it in order to taste right. There's also black walnut ice cream.
Sensei Tauntaun there is also definite procedures for shelling them, the whens & hows. Missouri here too; have many trees in my yard. The tree roots are said to contain a poison that inhibits other plant growth in the area. Tell that to the weeds please!
O! next time you want to open it, pop them in the freezer overnight first. Way easier to shell. addendum: we always used an old stone "brick" with lots of natural grooves that cupped the shell while hammering.
