The last BLACK WALNUT processing video you'll ever need, ridiculously efficient method!

[@FeralForaging]

Additional processing notes and ideas! One of my patreon members had a genius suggestion which is to just stack the various sizes of mesh filters on top of each other so you can sort them all in one go. Brilliant! Remember to use code feral24 at Grandpa’s Goody Getter to get $10 off your order of the best black walnut cracker in the world! I realized that I forgot to mention, after soaking your nuts, you want them to be dry on the exterior before cracking! For cracking, I have found that providing slight pressure along the two widest points of the black walnut shells allows the cracking to happen more uniformly, and the nut meat on the inside is damaged less frequently! The smaller pieces that you get from the 1/8-inch mesh can sometimes have a few shells sneak in there, so you have to be really diligent about removing them! These would work great for something like Forager Chef’s new black walnut milk recipe. You should check it out! I found that a deeper bowl works better when using the swirl method than a shallow one.

[@lessummers5738]

If I get my own walnuts shell them and wash them can I crack and eat them or do you let them dry for so long ?thanks

[@bettertvreceptionwithfoilf7100]

My Grandfather taught me to love black walnuts. He threw them in the driveway and drove his car over them until the shucks were off, and then he'd put them in bushel baskets and put them by the coal furnace in the basement to dry them out. When he worked for Michigan Dairy, years and years ago, he cooked down their first pan of condensed milk. He also invented two ice cream flavors. One was black walnut, and i don't remember the other one. Wish i'd have paid more attention to my Dad about it now.

[@anyascelticcreations]

What beautiful memories. Thank you for sharing. ❤

[@Maxim.Teleguz]

Can you ask them to give you a summary of his work?

[@bettertvreceptionwithfoilf7100]

@@Maxim.Teleguz I recently found his street address when he was living in East Lansing and it is now I believe a Biggby's coffee.

[@codyrebelcb]

"invented two ice cream flavors," That's just putting flavors together, wouldn't call that "inventing." Lol

[@bettertvreceptionwithfoilf7100]

@@codyrebelcb So, no one invented the PB & J? No one invented chocolate milk? No one invented any recipes at all? You logic is flawed.

[@notmyworld44]

Here in northwest Arkansas black walnuts are super-abundant. If you are not familiar with this particular type of walnut, they have a strangely acrid odor and taste that requires getting accustomed to. Also the outer green husks contain a large amount of something that smells like iodine. The rock-hard inner shells can be ground to a powder and used as a polishing compound. There is a black walnut processing plant in Gravette Arkansas, not far from where I live that shells them. This video was really excellent with good information!

[@FeralForaging]

Glad you liked it!

[@aliannarodriguez1581]

With regard to the taste, I processed some black walnuts a few years ago and was horrified to discover they tasted like machine oil. It wasn’t just bad, it was toxic tasting. I tried several different nuts thinking I had gotten a bad one, but they were all the same. However, if I left a half eaten one out for the squirrels, they didn’t hesitate to gobble them down. So it’s me? Have other people had this experience? I really wanted to like them.

[@notmyworld44]

@@aliannarodriguez1581 There is information available about them that indicates the tree somewhat toxifies the soil so that you can't successfully cultivate a garden within a black walnut tree's dripline. There is a lot of hydrojuglone in the green husks of the nut, and it smells very much like tincture of iodine. You can smell it quite strongly. There's a good description in Wikipedia.

[@kristamun8614]

If your really that worried about wasting water, put a bucket under the sieve. When you swirl and pour, the water will go in the bucket. Then pour that water into the bowl to swirl and pour again.

[@FeralForaging]

Great point!

[@adreabrooks11]

I came to the comments to make this exact suggestion. XD

[@kvs-adonai5214]

I was going to suggest the same thing...lol

[@surfcat2051]

Then use it to water your garden.

[@seanrowemusic]

Love the water swirl separation technique! Great video man👌

[@FeralForaging]

Thank you!

[@lucasdog1]

In the soaking process, we put the nuts in a cement mixer with the water. Let them tumble for an hour or so, drain and add clean water. let them soak for the remainder of time. It really cleans off the shells.

[@Umbrella2756]

Flush Cutter is the name of the shears you used for anyone looking for the same thing

[@xmobile.]

Thank you! We had one shipped with our grandpa's goodie getter a couple of years back (it was 30$ to order extras) and i keep seeing people use them in crafting videos but never knew what it was called to find them (likely cheaper) at a hardware store.

[@anyascelticcreations]

I've only gathered black walnuts once many years ago. I didn't know anything about processing them and made a terrible mess of the whole endeavor. By the way, did you know that the ink makes a really good dye? It does. Including skin. And everything else it touches. Lol. 😅 I will definitely be watching your video next year about how to deal with the first half of the processing. And then I'll come back and watch this one again. Thank you much for making so many wonderful videos for us! I appreciate you!

[@xmobile.]

Awesome! I just found your channel from a short suggested to me and subscribed. I love how thrilled and passionate you are about this.. i was too, learning your tricks! It's so good to learn to soak them before cracking, so they don't fly across the room, or explode into your hand. I just sat around cracking and eating hickory nuts for what seemed like an hour recently and knew there had to be a better way to do it all. When the nuts are fresh they're easy to get out, but when they dry a bit they want to stick in the shell. I learned that swirling technique on my own from separating seeds from pulp, but never thought to apply it to my cracked nuts! Thank youuuu!! I bought my father a GGG a couple of years back and we're still thrilled about it. My father loves the black walnuts and i love the hickory nuts. It used to take so long with a hammer! I still haven't learned the best method for turning nuts or how hard or not to crack them. Last season, we collected maybe 3000 black walnuts and several hundred hickory nuts (i also left huge piles behind for the squirrels.. all that's left now are the shells which I'll rake up for using in campfires). I lived in TX for a while and learned about pecan rollers to pick up nuts. I don't know if the east coast is aware of them yet (I grew up and live in PA). My father had never heard of them either until i told him. We bought a cheap basic nut roller and it picks up anything from acorn to black walnut (and golf balls). It's all really streamlined the process. Our property is so abundant in nut trees. Anyway, cannot wait to check out more of your content!

[@FeralForaging]

That's how I first came up with the swirl method also!! Great minds think alike lol

[@objective_psychology]

Your content is a real godsend. You are one of the few people really advancing the field of North American forage-ology so to speak, and doing so in an entertaining, well-researched and widely accessible way. I've read up on foraging before but I still learn something from your videos every time. Thank you again!

[@zinckensteel]

Thank you so much! Black walnuts are such a common tree, yet almost universally ignored, or even reviled for hurting other trees.

[@kvs-adonai5214]

Great video! Your enthusiasm is contagious and delightful! Thanks for sharing.

[@FeralForaging]

Very welcome!

[@MsCindyh]

I bought that same nut cracker last fall, works fantastic! I cracked all my pecans with it also. I also twist the nut a little and crack partially again.

[@FeralForaging]

Yes, it's awesome! Works with hickory as well.

[@ifferl8781]

Thank you for making a video about methods to crack black walnuts. I live in Oregon, usa which, has acorns and walnuts as a unused resource by most of the population even though these trees are everywhere. Ok. So basically I wanted to say thank but I also have a question: is there a method to forage inner bark from trees that is safer or safest for the trees? I will subscribe because I like the way you explain your reasoning and the small business you support. Thanks again.

[@AOSChrisMiller]

My old neighbor would jack up the rearend of hos truck about an inch or two above the ground and he would toss the green ones under the spinning wheel and they would fly out the other side at a high rate of speed. Catching them in a bucket. He would age his a year in the shell and Crack them as he wanted them

[@johnpattison1]

What if you dissolved something (salt, sugar, soda, etc..) into the water just until the density changes so the walnut meat floats, but the shells still sink. You might not need very much, as it looks like the meat almost floats in straight water anyway, and the solute (salt, sugar, etc.) might help with preservation or seasoning! Or you could always rinse them clean afterwards if you used something like bicarbonate.

[@FeralForaging]

I had this in mind, but didn't get a chance to test yet. As I was in the final stages of publishing the video I actually saw someone seemingly do this successfully. I will have to test myself! Would be a great alternative.

[@midwestribeye7820]

​@@FeralForaging Let us know what you find out please.😊

[@steveboyer2976]

I was thinking he was going to add salt to separate them but then he started swirling. I would be interested to know how well it works.

[@mahna_mahna]

One thing I'd keep in mind when thinking of using salt is that freshwater salinization is a form of pollution. Once you put salt into water, it's energy intensive to get it back out again. We have that issue with things like road salt in states with a lot of snow and ice. If there's something other than salt that doesn't pollute the water, that's great. But since this method seems to still work great without the salt, I'd prefer to just spend a tiny bit more elbow grease than put more salt into the ecosystem.

[@reneenorth2304]

MY mom used to make a black walnut cake . My dad would run the nuts through a band saw then mom would pick them out

[@buckonono7996]

While we don't have any black walnut trees ourselves, we have friends who live very nearby who do. They and everyone on their street have loads of black walnut trees in their front yards and NO ONE does anything with the nuts! I have been told to come and get them all. 🤣 They all rake them to the curb to be collected with their leaves by the city. I know what I'll be doing this fall. 🙂

[@ChrisSmith-vc7xs]

My friend, you've already used three gold panning classifiers in the process; I'd suggest just buying an average sized gold pan and use the water STRATIFICATION technique you are doing to do the finishing work (in gold panning just swirl shake with one or both hands). With the metals we are just going in reverse of you: washing out the light material to keep the heavy, and you're washing out to keep the light materials and consolidating the heavy. And in the long run you'll be using that gold pan to hold and gather tons of in the field goodies - I do. For those that have read up to this point I'd suggest the colors of the light green (like a sea foam), standard green, light blue, and standard blue colors so your eyes can can discern the features of the item you are classifying out. A black pan is great for gold bits and gemstone bits, but not good for looking at natural browns and tans of nuts, berries, mushrooms and plant bits. Pan types: Garrett, SAE, Sluice Fox, and the generic knock-offs are just fine, but look for the big riffles built into the pan to catch, in this case, nut meat. Most of the 5-gallon fitting classifiers will sit on top of a larger gold pan, and a fingers under the pan lip and thumb over the edge of the classifier wall will give a good grip to shake-classify out all the bits of each stage. There are a plethora of gold panning teachers out there in YT-University to teach panning techniques: Klesh & Dan Hurd to name two. There are mesh bags out there that will fit panning gear, or if you are in an extreme bush crafting mood you could follow Sally Pointer in one of her older videos and she can teach you to build a roman style mesh bag that can be custom fit to your gear load. Happy trails and much bounty to you. ....and one more thing (Jackie) [for those that catch the reference]: your suggested sifters and gold pans are great for hells, mineral, gardening, and pretty much any sort of activity that you go, "I need a way to sort these out and catch them while processing.

[@melissasmith7069]

Blast from the past, my Great Grandma use to do it this way. She would of loved that machine to crack them with, she just had us and hammers, lol my poor thumb remembers that part well 😆.

[@FeralForaging]

Love this! I hope future generations will continue to have stories of their family's gathering and processing black walnut. 🙏

[@DJ-DOESIT]

This helped a lot honestly, this season is going to be so much more easy now lol. Thank you! Keep doing what you're doing, loving the informational videos.

[@FeralForaging]

Great! That's what I'm hoping for. :D

[@Arboreal_Fungi]

Wow! So many great tips here. Thank you!

[@FeralForaging]

Very welcome!

[@elijahsanders3547]

This was fantastic! Thank you. My Grandparents had a regular walnut tree growing next to the irrigation ditch out in the country, and my Great Grandma would take bags of them and crack them in her chair, use them in her apple pie (the apples of which they also grew on a gentle slope not far from the ditch :)

[@FellsApprentice]

And now we can use the shell for more tannins

[@warthogA10]

Tannis is great for stopping unwanted plant growth. Although I tried it with the Japanese knotweed on my property and it didn't work 😞

[@Hamza-B3]

The sieve and swirl reminds me so much of gold panning, i reckon if you filled them in a gold pan and panned it, you could mass separate the meat and shells quicker

[@Hamza-B3]

You can stack all the sieves in a tower and dump it on top, shake them(rotate tower side to side) down into the bottom where there is a bucket Edit : saw the pin nvm lol

[@FeralForaging]

Great minds think alike!

[@figendicleli9605]

Türkiye den merhaba teşekkür ederim

[@SamDJackson]

wow thank you this is incredible advice. I've got 2 big bags of cured black walnuts from last fall that I only use on rare special occasions because they're such a pain to crack. This advice is going to make it reasonable!

[@michellekelly1746]

Great video; thanks for sharing your methods! It's one thing to learn identification and know what's good to harvest, but it can be a much bigger hurdle to know how to process things step by step. And some things just don't feel worth the time, so your knowledge is much appreciated!

[@amanecer4914]

This was so helpful.. black walnutt hual for parasites, you demos and suggestions are helpful .. thanks a bunch

[@FeralForaging]

Very welcome!

[@lynnbry1556]

I wonder if you slightly salted the water at the swirl step if that would make the nut meats float even better, due to denser water, then leave lightly salted or wash afterward to remove the salt. Thanks for the video!

[@itsno1duh]

After one miserable fall/winter deskinning and cracking BL walnuts I had learned a healthy respect for the difficulty of the task! Often requiring a hammer! But then I would see a squirrel cheerfully pick one up and with seemingly no effort at all he would crack the shell and get his dinner! Squirrels are instinctively wise! Like there is a secret code that they already know, right? Thx Jah!

[@cheryllewis-battles7664]

Nicely done

[@GrandpasGoodyGetter]

Awesome Video.. 5 thumb ups.

[@FeralForaging]

Thank you! Same to the Goody Getter! 😄

[@michelleragan8258]

I came across your channel quite by accident but am thankful I did. I have enjoyed all of the videos I have watched so far. In this video, I could not help but notice a pretty severe rash of some sort on your right arm and hope you have been able to identify the source of it and have found some relief from it. It looks pretty bad.

[@FeralForaging]

From a little too thorough of a poison ivy experiment that I conducted in the video before this one... 😅

[@Tom-yc8jv]

Salt the water to float the meat

[@skylark391]

Last fall I picked up some black walnuts and they were curing all this time, but after watching the video and realizing how much special equipment and effort I would need, it's safe to say I'll drop them in my compost bin and hope they decompose one day.

[@Stella-n-Luna]

I’m sending this video to my next door neighbor’s that I share the black walnut tree with! If you see this, hi 👋 Legna!! 😂

[@midwestribeye7820]

Fantastic video as always! I'll be purchasing those screens and trying this next season. This was my first season foraging them. I gathered 3 ice cream buckets (hulled). I wasn't sure if I'd like the taste. LOVED them! I'm aiming to get much more next season. Thank you for sharing your knowledge!😊

[@walkers]

That was awesome. Thanks buddy. I feel like my attitude towards using those guys is now changed!

[@FeralForaging]

Awesome, that's exactly what happened to me and what I hope for others too. 🙏

[@warthogA10]

A small bench vice and a bucket is a great way to shell.

[@mahna_mahna]

Argh! This video was great but also heartbreaking. I have a big black walnut tree in my yard and was rubbing my hands together at the thought of successfully harvesting them. But then I found out it was a bit of a tease, in that you wouldn't be showing the curing step. 😭That's where my previous attempt fell apart. Wound up with moldy black walnuts. I could probably google around and find other places to tell me, but your videos are _so good._ 😁

[@tomcc333]

Could you do the swirl nethod with a water hose? The bucket overflowing might push the meat out leaving the hulls, would take some practice I'm sure.

[@venidamcdaniel1913]

Excited

[@GrowCookPreserveWithKellyDawn]

Thank YOU for this!!!

[@jwolpert1310]

Wow, some great ideas here!

[@warthogA10]

I have two very good producing black walnut trees on my property. I don't care for nuts very much anymore because well, "reasons". But the animals love them so, they dont go to waste at all. I also have a very annoying, large patch of Japanese knotweed which i know jas uses, I wish I could find someone who wants it and would come harvest it each year so I dont have to 🤣 That is one truly pita species

[@Stella-n-Luna]

I have sooooo many black walnuts that I truly don’t know what to do with them!

[@High-Tech-Geek]

I'm a bit confused. 50 years ago, around Thanksgiving and Christmas, we would get bags of assorted nuts with the shell still on, including walnuts. They looked nothing like your fuzzy black walnuts. They were clean, dry and looked like hard, brown wood with a distinct seam all the way around the shell. We, as young children, were given a nutcracker - a tiny metal handheld lever that looked like 2 chopsticks connected at one end. We would crack the nut ourselves in the palm of our hand and pick out the walnut pieces (and other assorted nuts). Yum. I don't know why your walnuts look so different in the shell. Why don't you skip the cracking step and sell the nuts in the shell, clean, dry and brown?

[@jesseandersen4055]

Crazy to think 100 years ago there was an even bigger wild producer in the forests of the eastern us. The american chestnut, giving people calories for thousands of years.

[@LMF1716]

I find it hilarious how the intro to this video is set up extremely similar to those online guru scams. Like "I created this secret method, and once you learn it you'll never go back" but it's just about harvesting black walnuts

[@Maxim.Teleguz]

Use filtered water for soaking so that the water plant treatment chemicals don’t get into the nuts.

[@amandamimic2725]

I don't have any black walnut to experiment with this myself, but I wonder: Salt water had a different weight than freshwater. I wonder if there is a reasonable amount you could add to water to float the meat?

[@forglory9537]

I bet if you dried the broken pieces after you cracked them, it would make them easier to pick out of the shells AND help the meat to float better.

[@Maxim.Teleguz]

I can help you design a new adapter to maybe split them from the center and force the peels out as you split them

[@Maxim.Teleguz]

Tell me the internal diameter of the press ring and the space available to top of walnut in fully opened state.

[@donnerpartysupplies5187]

Low speed centrifuge

[@venidamcdaniel1913]

I would swirl then use small strainer and capture while water swirling.

[@moniryousefian8782]

Where did you get your black walnuts?

[@JuliaFrank-zy7yj]

Do you have a hazelnut video?

[@monareese5307]

Too bad.I didn't know this last suwhere.I used to live.There was so many of them all over the place in my neighborhood but who is gonna pick up all those walnuts😂😂😂

[@venidamcdaniel1913]

Daddy always threw the black walnut in the driveway to dehull them. lol

[@Stella-n-Luna]

What happened to your right forearm, Jesse, are you ok? It looks like a possible burn 😢

[@caveforce]

Thanks for the tips! The video would be much more enjoyable if you didn't do the super close shots that make my eyes cross until the lens focuses. Or edit the video until the focus catches up. Eek!

[@venidamcdaniel1913]

Still a tedious process. But if you love black walnut. Dedicate a day of doing it.

[@robertfischer6259]

I watch you on various projects. But, what you do not say is what I think is most important for the food needs of people then. How much actual protein is in the various nuts & goods you & we could find. Also, if we are searching for foods to have sustain our energy and nutrients. The other thing I wanted to ask you is where are the pockets of space people would want to walk to see how things are growing. On nuts, my Grandma use to have a black walnut in Alabama. The family also had pecan trees. There were these sets of picks, a nut clamp, and then I think some that were more for thinner walls of pecans and hazelnuts, then there where other kinds of nuts. It seems that nuts were a larger part of the diet. Do you find that down South nuts are more of the diet? Also, where do you search out paw paws? Are there one one kind or do different regions have other types than in Michigan, and other States in the Midwest and East Coast?

[@spacecaptain9188]

6 minutes in and the only thing you've said is "soak them first". My 2 cents: Talk MUCH less; say useful things right away.

[@oldwaysrisingfarm]

You did not need to word over fruit, nuts are a sub-type of fruit!

[@laurazarboni9647]

Who has $199 to crack nuts

[@ladyann5778]

They are to hard to do id rather buy them

[@FeralForaging]

Nothing wrong with that! I have found personally that the black walnuts that I have processed myself to taste superior to the ones I have purchased from a 3rd party.

[@az55544]

sorting by size with sieves serves no function whatsoever. you're still picking through each shell piece, regardless of size.

[@FeralForaging]

I would recommend trying it without sorting them and you may find its use! Dealing with just larger shells is far easier than many tiny pieces.

[@canadiangemstones7636]

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