I found, (totally by accident) that we have many large hickory trees in our back yard. I never paid any attention to them over the last 20 years, thinking they were Bitternuts and akin to acorns. Well, my wife brought in a huge nut and said “what is this?” I looked it up, and then cracked it in a vise to see how it tasted. OMG, it was awesome. I promptly gather up all the nuts I could find, and we harvested a pile of nut meats which my son devoured.  None of us really like tree nuts, but these are exceptional.  Like a cross between a pecan and walnut, very mild and sweet.

It seems there are many species of hickory trees, and they are all different on the taste scale. We lucked out and have Sand Hickories, which are good vs foul. Anyway, I figured I could make a pie from the nuts. I had two gallons of nuts just from some half-ass late in the season gathering, so now on the show.  Well, it was a bit more complex than the Web would led to you  to believe. First, you can’t use a nut cracker or hammer. The nut is exceedingly tough, and must be crushed in a vise on the short axis down to about 1/2″. This frees up most of the meat and cracks the internal webbing, after which you can pick out hunks that don’t fall out. Once you get a big pile of nut meats and small pieces of hull, you can either sort them by eye OR use the goldminer float technique. I say that because the meats and the hulls DO NOT separate neatly in water, contrary to the bullshit on line.  They are a different specific gravity, but can be “panned out” in water. I used a rectangular piece of window screen as a scoop, and gently moved the meats up in the water where I could catch them. The hulls all stay on the bottom, they stragglers that get caught can be seen more easily when wet and picked out.  This process is hard to describe but will be apparent once you begin.  Dry the meats on paper towels once done.

Here’s a link to the pie recipe:

https://www.tasteofhome.com/recipes/hickory-nut-pie

And a pic of the first batch of experimental mini pies:

They didn’t last long! They are so good, better than pecan IMO.