Black walnuts

I think we have all seen and smelled black walnuts.  Here is one on my porch with the flesh still on:

In the Fall, they cover the ground under trees, slowly rotting and giving off that characteristic piney aroma.  I really like the aroma.  Inevitably there is a squirrel or ten in the neighborhood collecting them.  I've always more or less ignored them, but this year I decided to try to harvest some.  I mean, they are lying all over the ground.  Just pick them up and you've got free food.  Walnuts are tasty, right?

First thing to know, black walnuts have a very strong, distinctive taste.  It's not for everyone.  They taste rather like they smell, a bit like Pine-sol.  It's an acquired taste.  I hear that they taste good on things and when baked and I've gotten a bit of a taste for them, but it's been a slow process.  If you like retsina, the Greek wine with pine tar added, you might love black walnuts.

Second, they are a pain to get out of the shells.  They are too hard to use a nut cracker, so you need a hammer and a hard surface.  The nut doesn't come out easily, either.  You have to more or less obliterate the nut and harvest the nut piece that fall out.  The nut is kind of interwined in the shell.

Third, they take some time and effort to "process".  How do you do this?

1) You need to remove the outer fruit.  The fruit is actually pretty hard, so you need to cut it off with a pocket knife.  I just cut a circle and pulled the two halves apart.  See the two halves and the shell below:

You need to wear gloves when doing this, like the nitrile ones in the background.  Black walnut juice will stain everything, including your skin.  My glove broke and I had a zombie thumb for a week.

2) Wash the shells of remaining fruit.  I did this in my sink with a scouring pad.  It smells and the waste water is black.

3) Cure the nuts.  They say that you need to put the nuts in a porous bag, like an onion bag, and dry them for a month or two.  I plopped them in my food dessicator for 2 days.  It seems to have worked fine.

I probably won't harvest them again, but we'll see.  I find other foraged foods much more rewarding and delicious.