After we let the black walnuts dry out for a few weeks we were pretty anxious to see how they turned out. If anyone has cracked open or has tried to open up black walnuts it is not an easy task.
We had done some research to see what the best way was to open them without totally crushing the nut. We found the vice to be the best tool. This way we would control it better and get a cleaner break. It worked pretty well.
Once we had them cracked in half the harder more time consuming part came. We had read that it you use just a regular wire cutter you could cut around. This would help getting more of the nut out as a whole versus a bunch of small parts. At first it was pretty challenging and we were not very good at getting bigger pieces. But as we continued it actually got a lot easier and we got a better feel on where we needed to cut. Most know that Eric and I can be pretty competitive with each other so we were trying to see who could get out the biggest piece (there may or may not have been a bet involved ;).
This is just the beginning of the jar (the silver picks that are on the side helped pry some of the remaining nut pieces out of the shell). It is one of the small marshmallow cream jars. After about 60 nuts we had the whole thing filled! This jar we put in the freezer to preserve the nuts (they will last up to 2 yrs in the freezer!). The rest we plan on using our food saver that way we can just store them on the shelf with the rest of our food storage. This way they will also last the two years without taking up space in our freezer :)
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