Hickory Nut Recipes

About

Shagbark Hickory (Carya ovata) nuts are a famous relative of pecans you can harvest that can be shelled, or mashed up and made into rustic nut milk for cooking.

Quick Links

If you're new to harvesting these and want to try doing it yourself, check out my in-depth Forager's Guide to Shagbark Hickory Nuts that covers harvesting and cracking.

Other Nuts to Know

Shagbarks are related to Black Walnuts and Butternuts / White Walnuts-two other types of wild nuts I like to harvest.

Species

I work exclusively with shagbarks here, and in my opinion, they're the best because shagbark hickories have a much thinner shell than their relatives (shellbark, pignut and others).

A few varieties I've had. Some have much thicker shells than others.

Hick Milk

Any commonly eaten species can be dried and cracked, and will taste fine, but the real magic is in crushing them like the Cherokee do to make Traditional Hickory Nut Milk

This method doesn't require picking individual nuts from the shells. If you have shagbarks you want to cook with, I suggest making that first.

The nuts can be crushed and cooked to make delicious milk and tea.

After you get the hang of making hick milk, try some of the recipes I've made that use it in cooking, like Hickory Nut Rice Pudding, and Hickory Nut Pot du Creme.

If you don't have a blender or means of finely crushing the nuts to make milk, you can also make a simple Hickory Nut Tea that's delicious too.

Bark

Finally, if your trees aren't producing nuts, or you want to try something different, know that you can make Shagbark Hickory Syrup, and it tastes a bit like smoky maple syrup.

Bark, cleaned and ready for roasting to make syrup.