Prepare and store walnuts
If you are collecting the walnuts yourself or harvesting them from a tree in your own garden, you should wait for the nuts to fall from the trees on their own. Only then are they fully developed. In addition, you save yourself the laborious work of detaching the green shells from the nuts: If the walnuts are ripe, it will fall off by itself.
Once you have the nuts at home, here's how to prepare them for storage:
- Sort out nuts with damage to the shell, traces of mold and blackened shell. These fruits are not durable.
- Rub the walnuts with a dry cloth or brush to remove any remaining shell. These could later promote mold. You should not clean them with a damp cloth, as this could rot the nuts.
- Let the walnuts dry in a warm room for several weeks. A boiler room with temperatures above 20 ° C is ideal. When drying, the nuts should be spread out over a large area so that no mold forms. Apply them every few days.
- As soon as the walnuts are well dried, you can transfer them to storage containers to save space. Air-permeable jute sacks are very suitable, for example.
- For long-term storage, the walnuts are best kept in a cool storage cellar. A garden shed or garage are also suitable places. The room should be dark and not warmer than 16 ° C. Make sure that mice do not have access to the nuts. You should not store walnuts in the refrigerator, as the air cannot circulate well in them and the nuts are therefore prone to mold formation.
- Occasionally check the stored walnuts for mold and rot. Corrupted nuts have to be sorted out immediately and those in the same container have to be consumed promptly.
also read
- Drying fresh walnuts - but in the tumble dryer?
- Freezing walnuts - the best way to keep freshness!
- Freeze nuts and store nuts like squirrels do
Walnuts stored in this way can be kept for at least six months. If you carefully check the nuts for mold before consuming them, you can usually enjoy them for much longer.
