Wild Black Walnuts

Photo by Amy Cowell of Edible Austin, TX

Black walnuts seem to be plentiful in this part of the country.  I have two trees in my yard and there are at least other 25 throughout the farm.  I think black walnuts are an acquired taste. Their flavor is strong and bittersweet - a nice counter point to something sugary sweet. I certainly wouldn't recommend eating them out of hand.

When we were kids my grandfather collected the walnuts on our farm and took them back to his city home to parcel out to his neighborhood squirrels  through the winter. He and my grandmother lived in a little California Bungalow style house in Dayton. The house had a wrap around porch with a porch railing made of brick posts and wide cement railings.  When we went to visit we laid the walnuts out on the railings, then scurried into the house to watch the squirrels through the window. We never seemed to have squirrels in our yard at home on the farm and to this day I associate squirrels with cities.

My grandfather cured a few walnuts for us each year and my mother cracked them for making walnut brittle or a walnut cake.  The bitter flavor is a good counterpoint to the sweet brittle and cake.To make the brittle  Mom took one of her cask iron skillets, melted granulated sugar in it over medium heat, add the walnut meats, stirred and poured the mixture out onto a buttered rimmed baking sheet to cool. Then we could crack it into pieces and eat it like peanut brittle.  The cake was simply a rich white cake with walnut meats added into the batter.  The frosting was either a white butter cream or a carmel butter cream.  This makes a very sweet cake and again, the bitter walnuts were just the right touch.  We also like this cake made with hickory nuts - when we can wrestle them away from the squirrels. 

Apparently, black walnuts have become a foodie thing. Like their English walnut cousins, they are very nutritious. If you Google the words wild black walnuts you will find a plethora of people selling black walnut meats at about $12 a pound, which to my way of thinking is cheap considering how much work it is to harvest them. You can also find plenty of instructions for harvesting your own black walnuts - most of the instructions include a car, wire brushes and rubber gloves.