Hey Tom Nate and Rebecca here with the outdoor boys YouTube channel and today we are eating cookies made from black walnuts that we harvested out of our yard so we're gonna show you how to shell and husk in the harvest black walnuts and how to make some awesome recipes out of them.

All right so this is a black walnut tree you see how it's got kind of this wrinkly bark here and if you look up it's got very distinct leaves you can see it's got these green things that look kind of like tennis balls hanging from it they're all over and the walnuts when they fall from the ground it look like this the kind of these green balls.

That turn black and squishy and they fall apart and you can see here there's the wallet the hard nut we're used to eating is it in the middle there we got tons of them they're everywhere  black walnuts have this black sap that you can use to tan leather it's caustic it'll actually drive earthworms on the.

Ground so if you want to collect earthworms you can use tea made from the SAP and it'll stain your hands it'll also kill vegetation so if you have a bunch of black walnuts on the on your lawn like I do you want to get them off anyways plus they they go crazy when the lawnmower hits them so get them off the lawn is good and if you can eat them.

That's just a bonus well the tree has dropped about half of its walnuts and it's enough to fill up this entire bin but it's mostly husks and leaves and stuff so what we're gonna do is I'm gonna remove the husks and leaves and check them off the edge of the lawn here and dump the actual walnut seeds into this bucket here so we're.

Gonna try to separate and most the time they just squish right out you can see it's kind of this soft husk just comes right off so leave us we're gonna check off now don't wear good clothes and wear our gloves because this stuff will stain everything stain it black that smells kind of like wood varnish well we got a five-gallon bucket.

Brimming full of these wet nuts so we need to sort out the good ones and the bad ones we need to keep cleaning them off get rid of all these little maggots that live in the husks so here we go    I'm out let these sectors dry for a.

Little while here we are guys two months later it's almost Christmas time and and these walnuts have been drying in the garage and they look like they're ready to eat they're nice and clean not getting rid of my hands that dirty so you can see it's leaving a little bit of black powder a little bit of dust is coming off a but not much so let's break.

Them open and get them shell yeah these walnuts are really tough the shells on them are much thicker than domestic walnuts check this out   do smell sweet okay from one walnut here's all the shells and here's all the meat so as you can see it's a lot less.

Meat a lot more shell than than a domestic walnut which is pretty typical I mean all domestic fruits seemed to be a little bit bigger you know then the wild stuff but the smell is fantastic so I can't wait to try this is I mean it just smells sweet is the best way to describe it so we're gonna give this a taste try.

Some here try some Tommy the flavor is different I don't like it it's like a walnut flavor but there's something else there's yeah there's a definite a stronger flavor it's almost a cab pizza well there's a real trick to this just kind of tap tap tap oh there you go you feel it when it starts to crack and then you want to stop you.

Don't want to blow it into smithereens just want to get it open and then we can pick it clean inside where it's warm it is 30 degrees right now the stepper and it is called I am super impressed it's open like seriously these are these are hard shells well I gotta tell you having an anvil really helped it betters the back then I don't have to.

Be bending over is really great but you can do this on concrete or on the rock or any hard surface  look at his huge pile of walnuts man these things are awesome it took me a while to crack em open I probably spent 40 minutes 30 minutes shelling wallets but now I've got to pick the meat out.

And separate the meat from the shells and it smells awesome all right guys so let's get pickin and to pick the meat out I've got a little shish kabob skewer here just a little long skinny pointy object to kind of go and pick stuff out of the shell that's all you really need all right and I've got of course a bowl here catch the meat and we'll go from.

There see what happens you helping daddy your stick is done there's a lot easier with my little helper here hey tell me having fun I appreciate your help buddy you're good at getting the meat out of these walnuts so using these shish kabob sticks to pry out the meats really helpful I mean a.

Lot of its kind of crumbled up a little bit we still got some big chunks in here it's working working pretty good slow tedious work though no no Tommy if grandpa was here do you know what he would say right he would say get off the table Mabel these two bits of her beer so we make a wallet root cookies yeah yeah that sounds good well we've got.

Enough we can make a lot of cookies Olie Merrick Oh guys look at this look at this whole goal wallets here I'm not even halfway through that's a lot of nuts  want to come here and help me pick out these little pieces but oh so here we are picking out the last little bits of.

Meat and shells from the bottom of the basket we're almost done well guys it was a lot of work but we did it took about six to eight hours to shell this big basket full of walnuts and look at it we've got about three pounds of shell wall and meat and it was very tedious but it was also kind of relaxing and I got a bid to watch.

X-files so that was kind of fun but do you like it mmm that smells good you like that does that smell good yeah so now we've got to do some fun things with all of these wallets that we've collected from our front yard so I'm gonna make some walnut oatmeal cookies and il be a reward for my little boys for helping me out yeah.

Yeah that's how good you want some cookies yeah let's do it all right now three pounds Oh Wallace is a lot of walnuts there's a lot of different things you could make with this you can make black walnut pie banana nut bread but I'm gonna make some oatmeal walnut and raisin cookies here for the for the boys but I'm gonna have a lot of.

Leftovers and I'll probably just use those to sprinkle them on pancakes and oatmeal and put in muffins and things like that any rate I'm gonna make some cookies yeah it doesn't have to be hard I've got myself some of these ready-made cookie mixes I got some oatmeal cookies here I'm going to add the mix some butter.

Some eggs some a little bit of water and then a load of walnuts and some of these crazes the cranberry raisins and now we're gonna make some cookies  all right so once you got your batter mixing pretty well go ahead and add a bunch of crazy alright once you got the raisins mixed in add your walnuts.

Well I did a double batch of oatmeal walnut raisin cookies and I still have a ton of walnuts leftover which is just fine by me I'm gonna sprinkle leaves on all sorts of fun things over the next few months and I'm gonna put them in the refrigerator because they have a just a fabulous smell and flavor to them and I want to keep that as that fresh flavor.

As long as I can so technically you could just put it in any sealed container keep it at room temperature and it will last a very long time that way as well so but anyway we'll put my stash in the refrigerator well check this out I've got a massive pile of walnut shell and you know what I think I'm gonna do I think I'm gonna.

Save these and I might experiment with using them in my fish smoker it just smells fabulous I love the smell of them and the size is just right for smoking all right well these are pretty good looking little cookies I'll let them cool and we're gonna tuck in these taste do you like these cookies Tommy I really like them too normally when you have.

Like walnuts and cookies they're just kind of a texture but they don't have a bunch of a flavor these have a lot of flavor it is it makes the whole cookie taste like wild black walnuts and it's really good yeah it's it's different than any food you can buy in the store it's it's awesome well we got a ton of this we still have like three pounds of.

Walnuts we barely put barely put a dent in the walnut well I hope you enjoyed this video about harvesting black walnuts if you want to see more videos like this from the outdoor boys youtube channel don't forget to that's right click subscribe and don't forget to click that Bell button to get notifications because.

We put out new videos every week thanks for watching