>>2218960>>2218960Yea its a lot of work for a little nut but you dont need a lot. A pound of walnut meats has over 2900 calories. Generally the easier something is to harvest the more work there is in processing.
Step one is to lay them all out and with a flat bottomed "stomper" smash each hull. Then pick the nuts out. Wear gloves if you dont want black hands for 2 weeks but even then the gloves tend to rip.
Then i hose the nuts down and put a bunch in a 5 gallon bucket of water. The bad ones usually float and you can throw them out.
Then i put then into some breathable amd squirrel proof container, not stacked too deep and let em dry for at least a couple weeks. Usually the longer the cure, the better the flavor They'll last for years like this. Im currently cracking out the last of last years nuts.
Cracking is a different story. I bought a $100 nut cracker called the grandpas goody getter because I am a retard. It works great, just a weird purchase. You can also use a hammer but its quite a bit slower and you need to develop some practice with it. You wanna soak the nuts for a few days so the shells crack easier. A good crack kinda breaks the shell into pieces and you can usually remove a few big chunks and use a nut picker to pick halves right out. Also having a pair of shears is useful to snip away any piece of shell blocking the halves.
Its a lot of work but thats the price of free food.
