It's pecan season and the ground is covered with delicious bounty just waiting to be harvested and eaten! But there are a few things you need to do in order to enjoy their wonderful meat safely...
On a recent trip to visit my husband's parents we got to harvest a bunch of pecans from their backyard. About 20 pounds to be exact!
We shelled a few the night we picked them up, but most of them were tossed into a box to shell when we got home from our trip.
I loved shelling the pecans at the kitchen table while we chatted, Christmas music playing softly in the background and the baby running here and there.
How to Safely Clean and Store Backyard Pecans
The time we spent shelling pecans that night reminded me of my own childhood when we picked, shelled, and ate pecans from my grandparent's yard! Fortunately I had the experience of cleaning and storing our backyard pecans safely, but not everyone is so lucky!
So let me share a few tips with you now.
How to Pick a Good Pecan
First, you need to pick good pecans. Here are a few tips for doing that.
1. Make sure the outer shell has cracked and split from the inner shell.
2. Try to harvest the pecans as soon as they fall. At least within a few days. This will help increase the number of good nuts you get, and reduce the number that are lost to wildlife.
3. Look for cracks or holes in the shell. Discard those and keep looking.
4. Shake the pecan in the shell. If you hear a deep rattle, then you have a mature pecan that is ready to harvest! A hollow rattle means an underdeveloped pecan.
5. Look for a tapered end. A noticeably tapered end means that the pecan did not fully form and will not be good when shelled.
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How to Shell Pecans
Next, you'll need to actually shell them. You can do that in several ways.
1. A classic hand nutcracker: this method usually yields perfect halves every time, once you get the hang of it. The only downside being that your hand will get really sore if you are doing a large quantity!
2. A hammer and board: this is the method I employed while at my in-laws, since we couldn't find their nutcracker. It takes a bit longer, but worked well and yielded many perfect halves, but there were still a lot of pieces that I had to pry out of the shells.
If you do use this method, make sure to fully crack all parts of the shell without smashing it to bits! It will make removing the nut easier.
3. A heavy duty pecan (and nuts in general) cracker: this method is my favorite! Each nut ends up taking about 15 seconds to harvest the meat from, so it's perfect for pecans in large quantities! We built a little box around ours to catch the shells and have never looked back!
Safely Preparing the Pecans for Eating and Storage
After you have the meat harvested from the shells, you need to make sure the pecans are safe for eating and storing. Here are the steps to do so!
1. Pre-heat the oven to its lowest setting. For my oven this is 170°.
2. Place pecans in a single layer on a parchment lined baking tray.
3. Bake at 170° for 45 minutes, or until fully dry all the way through. Not only does this enhance the flavor of the pecans, and give them an amazing crunch, it also has the added benefit of preventing mold from growing inside your pecan storage!
4. Allow them to cool completely.
5. Eat right away, or store in an air tight container for up to a year!
Be sure to try these Cranberry Pecan Chocolate Chip Cookies!
Terri says
Oh my gosh we just bought a house that has two pecan trees the one in my backyard I think must be a hundred and fifty years old the trunk is huge I know absolutely nothing about pecans I need to know more what about the green ones that fall can you dry them out and they’ll be a nut or do you just automatically throw them away I have wagons and wagons full of nuts that I’ve been thrown away and I don’t know what to do with them would they be good for any other purpose and then how do I harvest them wait for them to fall off the tree I’m 65 yrs young and being on my hands and knees is killing me…..we live in SC so the winters are a lot different than MI.
Victoria says
Hi Terri! You can gather the green ones if they fall to the ground, scrape off the green outer husk (don’t crack the inner shell yet), and let them dry in a well ventilated area until they turn brown. Then you can shell and eat the pecan inside the inner shell!
They won’t be ask good as tree-ripened pecans, but they will still be edible!
Generally, you want to wait until they fall off the tree and then harvest them quickly after that. They fall off when ripe. Don’t let them sit too long, or they will rot.
My in-laws have a HUGE pecan tree in the back yard and we use this pecan picker upper tool to really make short work of the picking up process! Then we use this pecan shelling tool so we aren’t cracking them with our hands.
I would imagine SC would be a lot different from MI! Down here where we are in Texas “winter” is basically a myth. Ha! :-)
I hope this helps!