Long term blog followers will have read my attempts with preserving freshly shelled walnuts (as dry nuts) here and here. In those posts I indicated I was aware that traditionally green walnuts are pickled,  but I hadn’t known this when I set my mind to pickling. Recently I had the pleasure of enjoying some home-pickled green walnuts.

The orbs of soft shelled walnuts stood glistening in a jar of clear coca-cola coloured water.

One was drawn out from the liquid and cut in half.

In the photo above you can see the flanged folds of the walnut fallen out from its outer coatings. Clearly everything looked soft so I set about tasting.

What I learnt was that the very thin ‘shell’ could be chewed and swallowed, but it was not really soft enough to be pleasant. In future I expect I will scrape out all the ‘meat’ from within these outer coatings and only eat that filling.

I started with the ‘nut’ portion and it dissolved in my mouth and slipped away. Terrific. I went back for the soft gooey interior that had surrounded the nut. Mushy and softly pickled. A total delight.

Pickling green walnuts later this year will now definitely be something I want to do – so offload your spare green walnuts here please!