I have a huge black walnut tree outside, and it's dropping these greencue ball sized...

[TreasonousBastard]

fruits all over the place.

Anyone here ever gone through the drama of getting those meats out and cooking them?

[TexasTowelie]

1. No, but I hope that this helps:

https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/extensions-greatest-hits/1999-10-02-preparing-black-walnuts-eating

[TreasonousBastard]

3. Thanx, but that's a popular one that pops up on top of searches...

(along with Amazon selling stuff)

[eppur_se_muova]

2. They're tought nuts to crack, but the flavor is interesting.

Haven't messed with them myself for many years, but try this link: https://extension.illinois.edu/blogs/extensions-greatest-hits/1999-10-02-preparing-black-walnuts-eating

(Just had to post this excerpt: Another approach is the personal frustration therapy technique. Place about 100 nuts in a burlap or heavy-duty sack. Strike the sack with a mallet until the nuts are broken into a mass of shell and kernel fragments. Then hand separate.)

Keep in mind that the husks are used to make a cloth dye, so don't wear your dress clothes, and be sure to sweep up carefully. Work outside, natch.

Google "recipe black walnut" for lots and lots of recipes.

[eppur_se_muova]

4. While you're at it, try making this fashion accessory ... :)

https://books.google.com/books?id=6ASu9OTUVj0C&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q=black%20walnut%20slide&f=false

[irisblue]

18. Maybe.put a sack of the nuts behind tires and drive over them 1/2 times

[2naSalit]

5. My friend had a tree for many years...

She and I did have a sit-down-crack-some-nuts session once. She made some items with them but mostly she used them as something you sprinkled in as an accent sort of thing since they are so strong in flavor. I can't recall what she made with them, I think she added them to baklava. She was a fabulous chef and had a repertoire of eastern European foods few have heard of in this country.

I'm going down to visit with her daughter today, I'll see if she knows anything. She inherited her mom's cookbook library in four or five languages, maybe we can find something. I'll be back Wed.

[usaf-vet]

6. I'm going to put this out there and let the reader do their own research. DO NOT try and grow a..

.... flower or vegetable garden under or near the drip edge of a black walnut tree. After years of trying to get a veggie garden to grow.

A friend who is a master gardener came to visit and just matter of factly said "you can't grow anything under a black walnut".

Grass yes-but not as robustly as the same grass 20 feet away.

We are believers. You decide for yourself.

[kwijybo]

8. It's called allelopathy

And black walnuts aren't the only one out there. Your friend is right (learned the name from google, the rest from experience).

[usaf-vet]

9. Thanks. I'm embarassed to say I have a degree in biology with some pretty good plant biology courses

But this was not a term I was familiar with. Maybe the 74-year-old brain just filtered that out of the storage banks.

I didn't know what it was called but I know it exists. Thanks again.

[BumRushDaShow]

12. Most likely due to the substance "juglone" that it produces

https://www.extension.iastate.edu/news/2005/jul/070701.htm
https://extension.psu.edu/landscaping-and-gardening-around-walnuts-and-other-juglone-producing-plants

There are a number of trees, woody shrubs, perennials, and biennials that exhibit a similar sort of allelopathy.

Survival of the "fittest"!

[MiHale]

7. 2019 black walnut drop...

A hard frost hit the night before loosened everything then the wind picked up. Ninety minutes later the tree was almost completely stripped of nuts and leaves.

Turn up your volume listen to those little orbs hitting the ground. When they hit you it leaves a mark.

[kwijybo]

10. Dad used to crack walnuts

Wear gloves, and clothes you don't care about. Use a hammer and anvil, semi-gently, to remove everything but the hard nut. Set those aside to dry (days to weeks). Once they've dried, use the hammer and anvil (or a log) to crack them. Store in a canning jar with a lid, in the freezer.

You can add them to chocolate chip cookies, eat them plain, or use them where English walnuts are called for.

Dad would eat himself sick while cracking them, he loved them so well.

[Tetrachloride]

11. Wear gloves and old clothes

don’t plant more walnut trees near a garden.

[KY_EnviroGuy]

13. In the 60s, when I was a kid in the country.....

some of us boys would collect black walnuts each fall, spread them out on a gravel road for a few days, then gather the hulled nuts to sell at our local Purina feed store by the pound. Our hands would be stained black for weeks, but the feed store paid us a lot more for hulled nuts.

For the ones we took home for mom to use in candies and cakes, we cracked them with a hammer on an anvil, them picked out the meats with a nut pick or ice pick. It was a pretty labor intensive process but worth it for the wonderful unique taste.

More or less the same process for Hickory nuts. I'm sure there are lever-operated nut crackers available nowadays but a claw hammer and steel plate or anvil work just fine.

More memories from good 'ole days as a kid in the hills of middle Tennessee.

KY........

[NNadir]

14. You need to wear gloves when breaking the green stuff off. It contains jugalone.

This will turn your fingers orange/yellow irreversibly. It does not wash off.

This will leave the nut behind. An ordinary nut cracker will open these; the fresher it is, the harder it is to do. I have resorted to a hammer and a block.

The taste of the small walnut inside - smaller than commercial walnuts - is extraordinary. The black walnut is one of only three known species, the other are algae in the ocean and human breast milk (where it's thought to help with neurological development) that contains eicosopentenoic acid, an omega 5 fatty acid. They are thus very good for you. Eicosopentenoic aicd has been utilized as a medication to treat heart disease and high cholesterol.

[Tanuki]

15. My dad used to crack them with a hammer when I was a kid.

They were great when chopped and added to fudge and other baked goods, and they froze well if there were too many to eat right away. Be sure to wear gloves when cracking them, or your hands will get stained a dark brown and it won't wash off.

[Biophilic]

16. I grew up in a yard filled with black walnut trees.

Yes, the nuts taste great, but what a struggle to get to them. We lived on a dirt road so my Dad would throw the nuts onto the road to get the outer husk off. Cars don't faze the inner shell. Once we had collected the husked nuts he would spend hours in the basement cracking them with his vice. Than, of course, you have to carefully pick the meat of the nut out from the shells. He gave up once we kids left home since even collecting the nuts to begin with was a bit of a chore. I do wish you luck and good eating.

[marble falls]

17. Yes. It's dirty, stains your hands, harder than the dickens to crack and pick the meats and ...

100% totally worth it!

[sinkingfeeling]

19. Some place I lived, either in NC or Arkansas, had several plants

that processed black walnuts. For a fee, they would take your green ones and give you back the shelled nuts.

[Backseat Driver]

20. I've tried to harvest some for personal use in holiday baking - it was

very difficult to remove the green hulls (finally used a hammer on a steel anvil one by one); an old-fashioned nutcracker of cast-iron on a wooden base did not work very well nor did bagging and rolling over them with the car. The hull contents permanently stain everything it touches. It also took much effort with a sharp pic (Ouch!) to remove the nut within - I didn't retrieve very many nuts for all that work. The experience really made for appreciation of those very small, expensive bags of black walnuts in the stores. Yes, I did know Black Walnut trees produce a toxin that prohibits other plant growth, juglone. Here's the scoop and a planting guide...

Attn: .pdf file:
https://www.johnson.k-state.edu/docs/lawn-and-garden/in-house-publications/trees-shrubs/Landscaping%20Near%20Black%20Walnut%20Trees.pdf

The hulls, BTW, can be swept up from the lawn (can ruin lawnmower blades) in a mechanical sweeper or by hand, collected, and brought (if there's many lbs: they will buy them per lb/ton) to local collection sites that a commercial industrial company set up for their own processing to be used for industrial applications of the nutshells mainly as abrasive cleaners (map location of collection sites) but also in the oil industry as explained here:

https://black-walnuts.com/view-nutshell-products/

[rsdsharp]

21. We had three at the house in which I grew up.

At least until the F5 tornado took them. Mowing the lawn in the fall was interesting. I don’t think you can just take them out of the green husks and use them. I think you have to dry then, but I could be wrong.

[Rebl2]

22. I have been

seeing squirrels with walnuts recently. Humans have a difficult time getting to the meat of the nut. How in the world do squirrels manage to do it! They must have some powerful jaws and teeth.