Processing the 2016 Pecan Crop

We have a few pecan trees in the yard and each year we pick what we can from underneath the trees crack and shell them.  Our pecans are really small, but they are rich - loaded with oil and very flavorful.

I like to sit in front of the fireplace while shelling pecans.  It is a relaxing, yet rewarding task. Depending on how many pecans we pick, it can be a long process to get them cracked, shelled and in the freezer.  We compost all the pecan shells into the garden.  This year we took our pecans to our local feed store to have the pecans cracked.  In the past, I'd crack them myself, but for a small investment, having them cracked mechanically, saves a lot of time.  There was a problem, though.  The mechanical cracker at our local feed store was broken and they weren't fixing it until next season.

We looked around and found that there is a place in nearby Breaux Bridge, Louisiana, called the Fruit Stand that has a pecan cracker that will crack our small pecans.  They charge by the weight and when they weighed the pecans that we brought to them, the total was 62 pounds.  They charge $0.35 per pound to crack them, so the total was $23.

Tricia dropped them off and drove to Lafayette and had lunch with me.  An hour later when she went to pick them up, they were ready.  She shopped around at the Fruit Stand and bought some good french bread while she was there.  She also looked at what they were selling shelled pecans for.  $10 a pound!  Wow.  She brought the big molasses tub full of 62 pounds of cracked pecans home and I got busy.  Since the pecans had sat on our back patio for a few months, we experienced some loss.  Some of the pecans were bad, but many were good.  In no time at all I had the big tub empty.  Out of 62 pounds of cracked pecans, we yielded five one gallon sized Zip Loc bags holding 18 pounds of shelled pecans.  I was hoping for better, but that's okay.  Now we have a baseline of 29% return on pecan "meat" to whole pecan, we'll shoot for better next year.

Four bags - with one already in the freezer

Although we snacked on some, we like to preserve them by soaking them and then freezing them. We use a recipe from Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions cookbook. It is called Crispy Pecans. We love this recipe.  It is very easy.  It calls for:
4 cups pecans
2 teaspoons sea salt
filtered water

Mix the three ingredients and allow it to soak overnight.  In the morning, drain in a colander.

Then spread the soaked pecans on a tray and place in an oven, or in our case, a warmer, and let it get to 150 degrees for 12 to 24 hours, turning until they are dry and crispy.

When dry, we pour them back into a Zip Loc bag and snack on them or freeze them for snacking or using for baking recipes like pies and brownies pancakes.

Making Pecan Butter

A few weeks ago we roasted the few peanuts that we harvested from our first peanut crop and made our own peanut butter.  Good stuff.  Hopefully our peanut crop will be a lot larger this year and we'll be able to make more.  We shelled lots of pecans from the trees in our yard and we have gallons of them put up in the freezer for making pecan pies and other delicacies.

We also soak a bunch of them in salted water overnight and then dry them at low heat in our warmer. They make a tasty, healthy, nutritious treat and we just snack on handfuls of them.  We showed you the process we use IN THIS BLOG POST.  Here's some that we have soaking now:

Pecans Soaking

I've seen all sorts of nut butters and figured we'd try to make some pecan butter with our pecan inventory, so I enlisted Benjamin's help.  He loves peanut butter and I figured he'd enjoy making some pecan butter with me. We took 2 cups of the crispy, soaked pecans and put them in the food processor. After about 30 seconds of processing, they looked like this:

Chopped pecans

After about thirty more seconds they looked like they were getting a little chunky and 'oily.'

Beginning to get mushy

About a minute or two later, the pecans were now converted into pecan butter.  With peanuts, you have to add a little oil to make peanut butter.  Not so with pecans.  I scraped down the sides of the processor and we both took a taste.  Mmmm...

Pecan Butter!

Then I got to thinking and wondered what it would taste like if I added a tablespoon of Steen's Cane Syrup?  Tricia makes pecan pies with Steen's Cane Syrup.  So we added that to the processor...

Steen's Pure Cane Syrup

While we were at it, we looked on the spice rack and spied a few more additives.  We added a little cinnamon, nutmeg, ground ginger, and Kosher salt.

Spicing it up

We turned on the processor for a little while longer and the pecan butter balled itself up, begging to be removed from the processor and put in a jar (and sampled!)

Ready to Eat

I scooped it all out of the food processor and the 2 cups of pecans converted into exactly 1 half pint of pecan butter once we crammed it all down in there with a rubber spatula.

Well, it almost all fit.  The pecan butter that wouldn't fit in the jar, we gobbled up with a spoon.  It was almost like eating pecan pie.

A lovin' spoonful...

I would highly recommend this addictive product.  It's perfectly fine to eat with a spoon, but you can also use a knife to spread it on hot rolls or make a PB&J sandwich (Pecan Butter & Jelly).

Because there's no preservatives in this pecan butter, it's probably best to refrigerate it since nut butters can go rancid.  I don't think we'll have to worry about that happening since this half pint will be gone lickety split!