To each his own I guess. When they still taste “green” I spit them out. To me they taste like the husks smell - not good - until they’ve cured.
Agree that cured hickory - and that applies to pecan also - taste better than when still green.
We tend to forget that native Americans exploited hickories for thousands of years. They often carried hickory nuts to their camps and left a few to grow. Over time, camps accumulated different species of hickory to such an extent that you can find a campsite just by looking for diversity of hickories growing there. There is a place on the Alabama river that is a very obvious long term camp site that combines a good location near the river with Mockernut, Pignut, and Nutmeg hickories all growing within a few feet of each other. The Buttahatchee mounds near Hamilton Alabama are another location with high diversity of hickory species.
Mockernut is arguably the most edible of the 64 chromosome hickories. Unfortunately, it tends to either be fantastic or forgettable. I’ve found 2 or 3 trees that were fantastic and thousands that were forgettable. The unique characteristic of fantastic trees for me has always been that the nuts accumulated a large amount of oil.
Bitternut shows one of the evolutionary paths taken by hickory to protect the seed. Other hickories developed convoluted shells that make the nutmeat difficult to access. Bitternut made it taste so bad that most mammals won’t consume them. As a result, bittternut often makes a nut with thin and open shells similar to pecan. What makes pecan unique among the hickories is that it is not bitter and the shell is not convoluted. Instead, an inner shell surrounds the kernel and can usually be removed very easily from a mature dry nut. So in pecan the “bitter” part is the inner shell leaving the sweet kernel easily accessible to eat.
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@Bigdoug03 … Doug… so far I have just been tasting them as I collect them. I wondered if they might get better with some cure time… and so I kave kept all collected (except those bitternut). I will let them dry and give them another try in 2-3 weeks.
But that one (pretty sure shagbark) tasted excellent right after dropping from the tree.
If it improves… it is going to be better than a pecan.
I will do my best to collect more of those.
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So… last weekend I went fishing… buffalo river… caught a few… then drove home down the Natchez Trace parkway (there is a parkway entrance about 5 miles from my house)… My brother in law had told me he found a pecan tree in a location down there near the entrance… so I just drove along nice and slow trying to spot a possibly pecan tree… no luck with that… but from the road I did spot the tree (nut pic in the previous post).
The Nuts are good size… very thick husk that split off in 4’s mostly… and come off easily.
The nut itself is not all that large once you get the husk off… a ShagBark nut (fruit) is supposed to be 1.5 to 2 inch… where the Southern ShagBark (fruit) is smaller 1" or so… per this…
The nut fruit in these are 1.5 inch x 1 inch.
All of the full leaf clusters I could find at this point had 5 leaves… which could be shagbark.
This tree looked to be quite young… not all that big and not super shaggy…
I have more Pics that I will send up from my phone shortly…
I have harvested near 3 gal of these nuts at this point… took my son with me this evening and we got 2 gal, of these and some black walnuts too.
So what do you hickory experts think ? have a found a ShagBark ? Southern Shagbark ?
More pics coming soon…
And if you live near the Natchez Trace you might find the info below useful…
TNHunter
That is what the bark looks like…
Most of the nuts are still hanging on.
There is a persimmon tree just to the left of it and a black walnut to the right.
One last pic… yes it is getting a little nutty around here.
TNHunter
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Foraged for hickory nuts again this eve.
I can tell now that here on my place the red hickory is very common… pig nut also…
I found a young tree… probably 12 inch diameter… that sure looked like a shagbark… but there were no nuts left on the tree or ground that I could find… I will check it out earlier next fall.
But every once in a while… mostly just up the hill a bit from the hollow bottom… I am finding this tree.
Not shaggy… some are huge trees… the nuts are large with fairly thick husk.
Are these mocker ?
They dont look like shag or shell to me… but they dont look quite like my mother in laws mockernut either. Her mocker nut… the nut portion (minus the hull) was quite small… compared to these.
Any guesses on what I have here ?
A few pics of the trees and nuts below.
I collected a nice bunch of those after work today. Sure gets dark fast now.
TNHunter
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Quadrangular nuts with diamond bark is almost always mockernut.
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@Fusion_power thanks for the I’d help. I watched a few YouTube vids on mockernut tonight… and yes… think I have that one figured out now.
I need to find a shellbark next… and try those. Will keep looking.
Well I finished searching thru the deepest of 3 hollows on my place…
Brought home more mostly mocker nuts this evening.
Here is a pic of that one I found that could be a shagbark… no nuts left around it at this point. I will check it earlier next fall.
I have found a few mockernuts eager to sprout already… this one was putting out a nice long root already. I planted it back.
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I was at Eastern Market this last weekend. There were a number of nut sellers there and after buying some black walnuts in the shell I asked “why don’t we ever see hickory nuts, either in the shell or shelled for sale?”
He thought a second and said that they tended to be too wormy and not worth it.
I’m not sure if that’s the right answer or not, but I am still curious as to why I can’t seem to find hickories in the stores.
Any ideas?
Scott
These hickory nuts… I have found so far this fall… mocker, shagbark, red… none are real easy to crack and get the nut meat out… there is a lot of work to it… but I dont mind.
I have found very few worms in the good nuts I have cracked… but have found several that had holes in them and tossed those right off.
Just bring home the ones with no holes.
Hope to find a shellbark … hear that they are good flavored larger and more nut meat less thick shell… which makes them easier to crack too.
Oh, the shellbarks often have quite a thick shell - some easily as thick as any mockernut…just less prominent internal ridges and larger kernel.
Hey @Lucky_P … I found this guy on youtube… tnsharpshooter … he has a few vids on shag and shell bark nuts. In one of his vids he shows them up close and how he splits them and extracts the nut meat.
His shellbark does have thinner shell than his shag. May just be a very nice shell he has there. He gets some very nice big chunks of nut meat from his. Impressed me for sure.
I have not been able to get anything close to those results… YET !! Still learning.
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Hey @Lucky_P and other hickory nut fans… that tnsharpshooter guy posted another vid on how he processes those shell bark hickory nuts.
His method seems to work pretty good. I have been doing that myself and like it.
I don’t have the same kind of (wire cutter ? pliers) he has, but mine work pretty good.
His - I think are a special pliers, makes it much easier to chop those nut shells.
Have any of you tried that ?
I am thinking about trying to locate and get me some pliers like that.
Notice he does not crack the nut to open it, he just slices it in two with a knife and hammer (pretty easily).
Do any of you have a method or special nut cracker that works better than his example ?
Thanks
TNHunter
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Fred Blankenship’s Mr. Hickory nutcracker works pretty good on walnuts and hickories.
Gerald Gardner’s Master Cracker is very good with black walnut. http://www.masternutcracker.com/
@Fusion_power … I showed my wife a YouTube vid the other night on Fred’s nut cracker… it gives his name and phone number… and shows it in use on hickory and BW.
Pretty sure I may be getting one of those for Christmas… well see.
Video link below…
One thing I am wondering is this… even with a fancy nutcracker and grafted tree nuts… in use… this guy operating Fred’s cracker… seems slow and does not seem to be getting better results than the tnsharpshooter guy.
I think that’s Dax (barkslip), right after he got his.
I use my Mr. Hickory more than my Kenkel, but I crunch, crunch, crunch one nut right after the other, pitch them aside into a bowl or box, then after I’ve done an initial crack on a gallon or so of them, I sit down with a pair of wirecutters like the ones pictured below and a nutpick while I watch TV. I don’t often use the ‘nibbler’ on the nutcracker. I do have to go back and re-crack an occasional nut, but for most, one crack is sufficient.
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It is not so much a matter of speed as it is ease of cracking. Also, note the guy with the blade and hammer is just splitting the nuts. Fred’s cracker breaks them down small enough to remove most of the kernel with at most 2 cracks.
@Fusion_power and @Lucky_P … glad you are giving Fred’s cracker favorable comments… pretty sure I will be getting one of those for Christmas.
Check out the pliers that tnsharpshooter is using… they are a little different… the pivot point is back closer to his hand… gives extra leverage… he says that about them after he does a few nuts.
The ones you have Lucky are similar to mine… but the ones tnsharpshooter has are a little different.
I have looked for some like that but not found them yet. Not sure what they are called… but I will keep looking. If you know where I can get some like that… let me know.
I have some large mocker nuts here on my place… very thick shell… good nuts… but I think having those extra leverage type cutters would make them a little easier.
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I thought tnsharpshooter’s looked not too much unlike a multi-tool. I’ll have to take a closer look…
Nope, just a big-jawed set of diagonal wire-cutting pliers.