For The Love of Pecans



My neighbor, Phil, has a huge Pecan tree growing in his backyard. The local, pesky squirrels hang out quite a bit at his place, but even if they grab a few nuts for the winter there are a lot left over for the humans.

Phil collected several large buckets this year and offered one to me. Given that a bag of pecans costs two or three times what it costs to pump a gallon of gasoline, I accepted the offer because I love to eat and cook with pecans.

I decided to have a quiet evening at home a couple of weeks ago and work my through the bucket, cracking and shelling. But, wow, I was far from being productive.

Separating the pecan meat from the shell in one piece is no easy task and it is time intensive. If I applied enough pressure to crack the shell for easy removal, I crushed the nut. Rarely was I able to apply just the right amount of pressure or apply the pressure in the right place to remove the nut in one piece.

But for the time I spent shelling -- a couple of hours or so -- I only produced a couple of cups of pecans. Not bad for a boring Friday night, but not good for making any progress on the huge bucket of pecans before the next crop of pecans fall in Phil's backyard. Here's a picture of the fruit of my labor that Friday night:



My shelling goal isn't just to produce perfect pecan halves because I end up chopping the pecans for a lot of recipes although perfect halves are best for Spiced Pecans (see recipe below).

So I threw open the PowerBook and asked Jeeves about the best way to shell a pecan. What I've discovered is there is no easy way to crack a pecan by hand and end up with picture perfect pecan halves. I could buy one of several expensive/not so expensive pecan cracking machines, but who knows if I'll be lucky enough to score a big bucket of pecans next year. And because each machine is hand loaded and triggered, it would still take an incredibly long time to crack and shell each pecan.

Then I happened upon a URL for a local company that will crack the pecans for a mere .30 cents per pound and they were located about 10 miles from my house -- Karen's Kracked Pecans.

Score.

I paid a visit to Karen’s Cracked Pecans’ Balch Springs location yesterday and within about 15 minutes of weighing my pecans (11.5 lbs. unshelled) I had a paper bag full of pecans completely cracked and ready for shelling.

The machine they used to shell the pecans looked like it hadn’t changed since it’s original invention. It was electric, but definitely a simple mechanical machine with a hand pressure adjustment that applies just the right amount of pressure to crack the shell and leave the meat intact. Unfortunately I forgot my camera, but this machine (I found the picture on the Internet) looks just like the one used on my pecans.



My total cost for the effort was $3.45. And within a couple of hours, I had 3 1/2 lbs. of beautiful, shelled pecans. I suppose with the price of gas nowadays I should figure in that expense as well – so make it $5.90, not bad considering a single pound of shelled pecans is priced anywhere from $7 - $8.



I found another place that will crack AND shell for $.70 a pound, but Lubbock, TX is a bit out of my way.

So I’m ready for spiced pecans. Here’s the recipe I made last year. The twist to this recipe is the addition of a bit of cayenne pepper. It’s just enough to add interest. No need for a chaser of any sort to put out the fire.

Spiced Pecans
1/3 cup
2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
3/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1 lb. pecan halves

In a bowl, combine the butter, cinnamon, salt, and cayenne. Stir in pecans until evenly coated. Transfer to an ungreased baking pan. Bake at 350 degrees for 15-18 minutes or until pecans are toasted stirring every 5 minutes.

Yield: 4 cups

Posted: Sun - October 30, 2005 at 10:34 AM          

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