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Mimishu1995's avatar

What is your experience with walnuts?

Asked by Mimishu1995 (23796points) March 2nd, 2015

My family just bought a bag of walnuts. It is the first time I have ever tasted a walnut. The walnuts’ shells have already been removed. However there seems to be a thin brown membrane covering each nut. The nuts taste bitter, maybe due to the membranes, but there are parts that don’t taste bitter. Overally, they are crunchy, a bit like almonds, and… delicious. I’m the only one who find them delicious. Everyone else is put off by the bitter taste and the brain-like look.

What is your experience with walnuts? Is it the same as mine?

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22 Answers

dappled_leaves's avatar

I also find them delicious! The thin membrane can be eaten without affecting the taste. If you have an opportunity to buy them in the shells, they definitely taste better and fresher if you crack them open yourself. The only downside to that is that it can be very frustrating to try to remove the nut from the shell, because the shape of the shells is very convoluted. We used to keep a small pick in our walnut bowl to help get them out easier.

Here, you can often find walnuts in brownies and cookies.

1TubeGuru's avatar

My best friends Italian Grandmother used to bake us small individual loaves of pumpkin bread with walnuts in them. i like eating walnuts by themselves and I absolutely love walnuts in baked goods.

Zaku's avatar

I like walnuts, a lot.

Some walnuts can be more dry or stale than others. Your family might like them more if you find some particularly good ones and have them try them.

Earthbound_Misfit's avatar

I like walnuts too. They used to be my favourite nut when I was a kid. Now they aren’t my favourite, but I still love them. Not really sure which nuts are my favourite now.

Brian1946's avatar

They’re almost as delicious as floornuts. ;-p

Kardamom's avatar

Oh my goodness. Walnuts loom large in my history. When I was a little kid, having walnuts was quite a luxury. My grandma would always have a bowl full of un-shelled nuts in a bowl with a nut cracker at Thanksgiving and Christmas. It was so fun to crack the nuts and pick the nut out of the shell. They tasted so delicious.

Now that I’m older, walnuts are a little more affordable than they were 30 or 40 years ago, comparatively speaking. Also, we tend to buy them already shelled in big bags and keep them in our freezer until we are ready to eat some or use them in recipes. If you keep them out of the fridge, they tend to go rancid fairly quickly (in about 3 weeks or so) but they’ll keep almost indefinitely in the freezer, and they don’t actually freeze, meaning that they don’t become hard. You can take them right out of the freezer and they’re ready to eat.

I love them plain or with a tiny bit of sea salt. They’re marvelous chopped up and thrown into a salad of romaine lettuce, crumbled blue cheese, and dried cranberries with a vinaigrette.

The best place to eat walnuts is in a Brownie. Second best place to put walnuts is in Fudge

I agree with @1TubeGuru that walnuts are delicious in pumpkin bread. They’re also good in Banana Bread

They’re also good in Oatmeal Cookies

I love them chopped up and sprinkled on almost any kind of cereal, especially Grape Nuts.

And let’s not forget about Cinnamon Rolls with Walnuts

Walnuts taste similar to pecans, only they’re a little more savory, rather than sweet. These two nuts can be used inter-changeably.

Sprinkle some chopped walnuts on an ice cream sundae. You won’t be disappointed.

I almost forgot, one of my favorite things in the whole world is Walnut Streusel Sour Cream Coffee Cake. This breakfast dessert does not contain coffee, it is meant to eat with morning coffee. It’s so good!

If you want to taste something really decadent, you might enjoy Makdous (Middle Eastern preserved baby eggplants stuffed with walnuts and pomegranate). This is one of the few ways I actually like eggplant. These little ones, and the way they are preserved, taste good and have a different, more pleasant texture than your standard eggplant/aubergine.

jca's avatar

I love walnuts. I eat them every day mixed in Greek yogurt, usually with some fresh berries thrown in. I keep chopped walnuts in a jar at work and one at home (in refrigerator) for the yogurt and also for other things.

I agree with @Kardamom you have to refrigerate or freeze them or the oil in them will make them taste rancid in a short while. I get big bags 3 lbs each at Costco, for about $18. If you become familiar with walnuts, you’ll find there’s a big difference between fresh walnuts and old stale ones.

My mom, too, used to keep a bowl of them with a nut cracker, and she’d have a few for a snack. When I was little, Santa would leave a few walnuts and tangerines in my Christmas stocking, along with some small gifts.

JLeslie's avatar

I like them. I put them in salad with raspberry dressing. I’m not sure if you have American salads in your country. I also put them in brownies and cookies. They help cut the sweet.

dxs's avatar

I love them. I think one that may need getting used to is how they dry your mouth up.

janbb's avatar

Love them, love them! You can take the dark membrane off.

I use them in baking, with yogurt, on ice cream with hot fudge sauce, put them in green salads and just eat them by the handful.

jca's avatar

One thing about walnuts is that they’re very oily. If you put them in a bag or on a surface, you’ll see oil lingering. That’s why they get rancid easily. Walnuts owners: refrigerate!

JLeslie's avatar

At hotels I make a mix of walnuts, raisins and chocolate chip bits. A lot of the hotels I stay in have those to put in oatmeal, but I just eat it like trail mix.

Pachy's avatar

I love walnuts. Lately I’ve been sprinkling bits on my morning steel-cut oatmeal.

stanleybmanly's avatar

Like apples, there are LOTS of varieties of walnuts, and each has its own distinctive flavor. When I was a kid, the local dairy manufactured a wonderful black walnut ice cream, the taste of which I can recall to the present day. In my adult years, whenever I encounter the flavor at a newly discovered ice cream shop I always try it, and the experience has been 40 years of disappointment

Strauss's avatar

I love walnuts as well. I usually discard that thin membrane, but the rest of the meat of the nut is delicious. They are good roasted and salted, and also great in pastries. My recent ancestors on my father’s side use walnuts in Potica.

ucme's avatar

I remember Walnut Grove in LHOTP, from when my mum used to watch it.

Cupcake's avatar

I soak my walnuts overnight in the fridge to remove the bitterness.

I love to eat a walnut with a drop of honey on it. Yummmmm.

Mimishu1995's avatar

GA everyone! I learned from you that the membrane can be removed and not all walnuts are bitter. And there are more than one way to eat them. I would like to try eating walnuts like some of your suggestion but now I have finished the walnuts’ bag :(

I never knew you and walnuts have had a long history @Kardamom. Your walnuts receipes look so good, especially the Brownie, a nice combination of walnuts and my chocolate love :p

Now I kind of wish I hadn’t finished off the bag in one sitting.

Stinley's avatar

I’ve got a walnut tree in my garden. I don’t really like them that much so the amount of walnuts we have is a bit overwhelming. I’m a little ashamed to say that I burn quite a lot of them in the fire. I think free heat is better than throwing them out though??

JLeslie's avatar

I just saw on TV last night that you can use a walnut to take a scratch out of wood furniture. The oils in the nut help reduce how deep the scratch is.

jca's avatar

@JLeslie: I learned a long time ago that you can use a little coffee (either instant but who buys that, or regular) to take a scratch out of a piece of furniture, too. Not a perfect coverup but it will minimize the scratch.

JLeslie's avatar

Coffee makes sense. Especially for darker wood stains.

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