This was a fun culinary experiment! My friend has a lot of black walnut trees behind his house. They are all offspring of a few older black walnut trees that were probably planted for an old homestead.
I remembered reading about pickled young black walnuts and wanting to try it out so I adventurously harvested a good amount to play with. Before harvesting I first tested a few of the still green black walnuts by cutting into them and confirmed that the hard shell had not started forming inside the husk.
I did try a nibble of one of them and had a very strong experience! The first taste sensation was bitter. I was expecting bitter and I am used to eating bitter foods and it didn't bother me much. A moment later as I continued chewing the flavor got very spicy! Strange! I was distracted by the spiciness and being astonished by that and I swallowed what I was chewing as this third strong flavor appeared that I can only describe as acrid and left me wrinkling my face.
I can only assume that the fermenting/pickling of the walnuts will change their flavor for the better!
I got home and started searching for recipes. They all revolved around two main steps: Brining for 7-14 days, draining the brine and then pickling with a spiced and sweetened vinegar.
Personally I am more interested in the brining/fermenting portion of the recipes. I searched for fermented black walnuts and I couldn't find anyone doing that ... what the heck I'll try it out.
Instead of fermenting the whole black walnut I decided to pre-slice them. Its interesting that the green black walnuts are somewhat sticky and left my fingers with a tacky feeling.
I placed them in a brine solution to ferment for 10 days. Within 1 day the top of the jars started turning black as you can see here.
Per the first step of the standard recipes I drained the brine and spread the walnut slices out on trays in the sun to blacken.
Meanwhile, of course I nibbled on one and the experience was pleasant! I nibbled another, still pleasant! There was a bitter note, but not as bitter as I expected. I thought the double soaking first in brine and then in vinegar would be what it would take to remove a decent amount of the bitterness.
Actually the bitterness that remained was tasty to my palate. I would not want to eat a whole plateful of them but they would accompany other food quite nicely.
I left the brined black walnuts in the sun and by the next day they were already quite a bit darker. Another sampling revealed that I enjoyed the dehydrated nature of the black walnuts even better than I had right out of the brining solution.
Initially I was thinking about a second fermentation in case one soaking and draining was not enough to remove the strong tannin.
Now on second thought, I decided to commit to dehydrating the black walnuts! I liked that idea: they would be more shelf stable and require less salt or vinegar. Dehydrated they lost about half their volume.
The flavor is interesting. Have you ever tried a brined and then dehydrated black olive? There is a similarity there in flavor in terms of the bitterness level. There is something about the saltiness, bitterness and robustness of the flavor that reminds me of a cross between beef jerky and dehydrated black walnuts.
The texture on the other hand is very unique. Just as others have described before me, there is a graininess and a slight woodiness to the texture. I don't mind it at all and find myself enjoying the crunchiness, but Idyllwild doesn't enjoy the graininess. Nonetheless we both enjoyed some with dinner :)
Here we are eating brined & dehydrated black walnuts with homemade daikon radish kim chi, garden zucchini curry and raspberry kombucha!
I think these crunchy dehydrated black walnuts would go really well on a snack platter with fruits, nuts and cheese and perhaps some wine or kombucha. Because of the saltiness you don't want to eat too much so pairing the salty bitter with sweets, sours and cheese would be a good combo!
Ultimately these dehydrated black walnuts are good snack food or meal accompaniment. I will be holding onto them for enjoyment in the winter when fresh food is scarce, or perhaps for trail snacking on long hikes!
The post brine pickling would be a totally different experience and worth trying out if the tangy vinegar sounds more appealing to you than a dry and crunchy black walnut.
Thanks for following along :)
