by W. Alan Bruhin, Sevier County Extension Director. Get your taste buds ready, because it’s black walnut season. Black walnuts are often found in delicious goodies such as pies, brownies and cookies, and fall is the perfect time to prepare such treats.

Black walnuts are not only tasty—they’re healthy as well. Black walnuts, help to promote weight loss and are rich in Omega-3 fatty acids. Omega-3 is missing from most Americans’ diets because we consume a large number of processed foods.

Even though black walnuts are enjoyable to consume, few still know how to harvest them and get them ready to be the delicious ingredient in a pie.

If this is your first time working with black walnuts, don’t be worried, it’s not only easy—it’s fun! There are four parts to preparing walnuts: harvesting, curing, cracking, and storing.

Black walnuts are typically harvested in Tennessee in October. You can tell if a walnut is ripe by pressing your thumb on to the skin. If your thumb makes an indention, then the black walnut is ready to be picked. For optimal quality in the nut meats, the nuts should be picked up and hulled as soon as possible. Delaying this process can result in the meats developing a dark color and strong flavor.

After harvesting the black walnuts, removing the hulls is the next step. Inventive methods of removing hulls from black walnuts have ranged from spreading them out and driving over them with a car to hammering them through a hole in a board. However, you can also husk them by walking on them or by just tapping the nuts lightly with a hammer. No matter which method you may chose, make sure to wear rubber gloves while hulling since the juice from the hulls will stain your hands.

Keep your rubber gloves on after you finish hulling, as you will also need them when washing excess juice and debris from the black walnuts. A neat trick to ensure quality nuts is to place the nuts in a bucket of water. Unfilled nuts will float in water, whereas nuts having a good kernel will sink,

After hulling and washing the nuts, you spread them out in thin layers in a shady area to cure them. Make sure to choose a well-ventilated area away from direct sunlight. Leave to dry for two weeks.

When dried, put the nuts in wire or mesh containers and store them in a cool, humid area – perhaps a garage or basement – until you are ready to crack them. Curing the nuts in this manner improves their flavor and lessens the bitterness or astringency of the meats.

Before cracking, place the nuts in hot water and let them stand for about 24 hours. Drain and cover with fresh hot water. After a minute, drain this water and let the surface of the nuts dry. This allows the nut meats to pick up enough moisture to reduce shattering.

A vise, hammer and anvil, rock or block of wood may be used to crack the nuts. Hand-operated mechanical crackers offer the advantage of speed, easier cracking, along with less crushed nut meats and more kernel. A pick may also be used to get more kernel out of a nut.