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Black Walnuts

Vince loves black walnuts. I can’t say that I’ve ever had them. He said they have a strong and “different” taste. True? I don’t know. That may be like me telling him bad things about my favorite foods that I want him to stay out of! 🙂

Black walnuts grow everywhere around here. Our first house in MO had about 6 of them in the back. Vince swears he never knew there were black walnut trees back there but you had to walk through them to get to the chicken coop and to his shop. I remember them because I was always afraid the nuts were going to fall and bonk me on my head when I was walking back there. I felt like I needed a helmet on when they were falling.

Our neighbor .. the one who is most helpful . . has black walnut trees. He had gathered up a whole truck load of them and he and Vince took them to a place that removes the outer husk.

The neighbors had picked out a bunch of the nuts and gave about 1-1/2 pounds of shelled nuts to Vince. I found a black walnut cookie recipe and Vince was saying “NO! I don’t want to waste them in cookies.” What is wrong with that man? Nothing is wasted that goes into cookies or ice cream!

The neighbor told Vince there were a lot of nuts that had fallen since he picked his up so Vince went over yesterday and picked up a box full of them.

I doubt Vince takes them and gets them hulled. He has a couple of ways he can do it here.

This morning I was thinking . . Vince loves walnuts. They’re in season right now. Maybe I can buy some for a Christmas gift or maybe to put in his stocking. I found Hammons Black Walnuts, which is about an hour from me in Stockton, MO. I ordered enough that he can have plenty for himself and I’ll have enough to use in a few recipes.

I love it when I can think of a gift that will be a good surprise for him.

Reader Interactions

Comments

  1. I do agree with Vince – they do have a stronger taste. We used to have a tree when I was growing up but I hate picking those nuts out of the shell.

    • Hopefully this will be Vince’s project but I will say that when I walked into the garage and saw that big box of nuts, my first thought, which I didn’t share with Vince, was “I’m betting those things sit there for years and then get thrown away.” We’ll see.

      • It might work. I seem to remember that the hayloft in my great-aunts’s barn in the Skagit valley always had walnuts in it! I was young enough to not wonder where they came from…they may have been there over the years.

        I had a friend who couldn’t eat the usual walnuts (English?) because they bothered her mouth, but said she could eat black walnuts.

        Also, you can rub their meat on scratches in furniture (I guess walnut finish) to blend them in.

  2. Love black walnuts, and yes they are strong tasting. Black walnut cake is delicious. I think they get rancid fairly quickly. Used to have a couple wild ones on the farm. There is one beside the road near our house and always hate driving over them and not picking them up. When making baskets, used to make tea out of the black hull for dyeing them.
    Have always read that nothing will grow near them. Not sure about that.

    • I’m not sure if it’s true but Vince read they will last longer with the husks on them. Also don’t know about nothing growing near them because there were huge mulberry trees planted in between all the black walnut trees so if the black walnuts weren’t trying to bonk me on the head, I was walking through a mush of mulberries and having to leave my shoes outside so as not to get mulberry stains on everything. We never planted anything else around them but those were old trees.

      I’m thinking I could try using the hulls for dying linen!

      • They make a lovely dye and it keeps forever if refrigerated. It could be a multipurpose dye. You could use it for linen and your hair so Vince can find you at Walmart. haha

  3. Here is a family recipe my mother-in-law (Lillian Larson, who was a fantastic cook) made that has black walnuts in the crust.
    Nut Pie:
    4 egg whites, 1 1/3 cups sugar, 16 rolled saltines into crumbs, 1 1/3 baking powder, 1 cup black walnuts, 1 tsp vanilla.
    Beat egg whites, add sugar and beat until stiff. Fold in crumbs and baking powder. Add vanilla. Put in pie tin and bake 30 minutes at 325 and cool.
    Cover with:
    1/2 pint cream whipped,, powdered sugar to sweeten, drained strawberries. (Can use raspberries or pineapple. Mix together and spread over cooked pie crust. Chill at least 2-3 hour or overnight.

    I loved this so much!! Maybe Vince will like it. I am a long-time blog reader and enjoy reading your posts.

    • Oh, my. We make something called “cracker pie” and use pecans. I’ve been wanting one of those so maybe when the walnuts I ordered arrive, I can make one. Thanks!

  4. I have never tried black walnuts…..My husband says he like English walnuts better…I’m sure he is prejudice because he grew up in English walnut orchards….

    • Since I’ve never tried them, I have no idea. Vince said he loves black walnut ice cream. Who doesn’t love any kind of ice cream?? I’m anxious to try them but Vince weighed the bag and I’m thinking he has the weight memorized and if I eat one little smidgen of black walnut, he’s going to know.

  5. I grew up on black walnuts and love them. English walnuts are fine, but not nearly as tasty in my opinion. If you haven’t tried them, you should. And I’m not prejudiced…my Mom is English. LOL!

  6. We had some black walnut trees on the farm where I grew up. I did not like the flavor, my Mom loved them. They do have a strong flavor but not a good one in my opinion. (That’s just my personal opinion). The husks do stain and might be great for dying some fabric or wood for furniture. Have fun with this great experiment!

  7. I love black walnuts! I really don’t like English walnuts much at all. My mom had a recipe for a black walnut meringue cookie bar that we used to make at Christmas. The base was kind of a cookie base with black walnuts in it and then the meringue layer also has black walnuts in it! I haven’t made them for years, because I don’t have a good source of “free” black walnuts. I probably should just break down and buy some. I do agree with Vince that black walnut ice cream is delicious!

  8. Black walnuts are a horror from my childhood. My brother and sisters and I had to crack them. My grandmother would make a black walnut cake for my daddy. We cracked them with a hammer on a brick. You had to make sure you got all the little pieces of shell out of the nuts. I think we cracked nuts for days.

  9. Love black walnuts. I keep bags of them in the freezer year round. Maple black walnut is my very favorite ice cream though hard to find. Another hard to find item is hard black walnut candy. Would love to find a source for that if anyone knows of one. I make a black walnut cake.

    As a kid, the shelling of walnuts was my least favorite chore.

  10. My aunt used to spread them out in her gravel driveway, lay a piece of plywood over them and run over with her car in order to start cracking them. I cannot stand black walnuts. I’m not a picky eater, but black walnuts taste awful to me. My parents both loved them and I would get aggravated when my mom made brownies and put black walnuts in them. Yuck!

  11. Southerner here. Black walnuts are a pain to pick out of the shell. A little goes a long ways. Maple black walnut ice cream is delicious. So is black walnut cake.

  12. We have a few black walnut trees here. Yes, they go rancid very quickly and if they are not taken care of in the right way when the nuts drop they get worms in them.

  13. OMG!!! Black walnuts!! Love them!! I grew up in SW Indiana. We picked them up by the burlap bag full. Laid them out in the gravel driveway to drive over to remove the outer husk. Evenings after school I used to use an anvil and a hammer to crack them. Mother would then pick out the nuts and return what needed to be cracked even more. Oh, the tails I could tell… They are best in dark chocolate brownies with vanilla ice cream on top.

  14. When growing up mom made black walnut cake with black walnut frosting also black walnut fudge. All was very good. Yes stronger flavor perhaps a required taste.

  16. Black walnuts have a taste all their own. My mother-in-law made a recipe called Esther Bars that the family has always loved. She used to make a panful for each of her granddaughters for Christmas. Now every year we have the discussion of how all of us have the recipe but they just don’t taste like the ones Grandma made. I think I have some black walnuts in the freezer so may try them this year if I get the time. When I was a kid on the farm (NE) we had lots of black walnut trees and in the fall we picked up bagful’s of the nuts for my cousins’ pet squirrels.

  17. Just got back from visiting family in SW Virginia. She was picking up black walnuts to take home. She said her fudge and brownies always won ribbons at the fairs when she used black walnuts.
    I brought some home to my niece spread them out on the drive way so we could run over them before I took them to her. IN less than one day the squirrels had removed the whole sack full.lol
    Don’t forget to wear gloves. Nasty little things.

  18. There are a few recipes in which black walnuts are acceptable. I prefer English. However, black walnut ice cream and strawberry ice cream together is very good!!

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