Gather Beechnuts and Bake Delicious Beechnut Cookies
In the woods on our Tennessee farm we discovered several American Beech trees (Fagus grandifolia), which grow only in the eastern United States. This deciduous hardwood is slow growing and long lived. In some years it produces lots of beechnuts, which provide mast for deer, bears, foxes, feral hogs, squirrels, chipmunks, wild turkeys and many other kinds of birds. They also bake into delicious beechnut cookies.
What does the American Beech look like?
A mature Beech tree can be 80 feet or more tall, and 3 to 4 feet in diameter. It has a massive crown, some 40 to 80 feet wide, with many branches covered with large, oval, pointed leaves.
The leaves dry and turn golden brown in late fall, but remain on the tree until well into winter. Then while the tree is dormant, thin, pointy buds sprout, grow up to ¾-inch long, and eventually become the tree’s new growth for the coming year.
The bark of the Beech tree is smooth and gray. Older trees develop cavities in the trunk that are used as dens by the likes of owls, squirrels, and raccoons.
Beechnut is the seed of a Beech tree, which doesn’t start producing until it is about 40 years old. By the time the tree is about 60 years old, it can drop up to 1,600 pounds of nuts in a good year.
How to harvest beechnuts.
Beechnuts are small, shiny, triangular seeds with a chocolate brown shell. Initially they are enclosed in prickly brown husk, usually in pairs but sometimes three. When the husks ripen in September and October, they naturally split open and the nuts fall out.
The nuts grow in cycles called “masting.” Here in the South we get a bumper crop of beechnuts every 3 to 6 years. I understand that up North they get a bumper crop every 2 to 4 years. But not every tree cycles at the same time. Some years one tree will produce lots of nuts, while a nearby tree produces hardly any.
You can pick the nuts off the tree, but we prefer to pick them up from the ground. Some years we spread a tarp under a tree and then collect the fallen nuts into small buckets. Before shelling the beechnuts we let them dry for a couple of weeks, spread on a tray or cookie sheet in a single layer.
How to shell beechnuts.
I won’t kid you. Shelling beechnuts is tedious. They are so tiny, it takes a long time to shell a sizeable amount. However, in the end they’re worth the effort.
They may be small, but they’re sweet and tasty. Sometimes I manage to shell enough for a double or triple cookie recipe (below), plus more to freeze for later use.
Some people peel them with a sharp fingernail. I use a small paring knife. I slip the knife under the pointed end of the widest flat side of the shell, and peel it back. Then the nut is easy to pry out of the shell.
Skip the nuts with a tiny insect hole in them, or those with sunken shells. Sometimes a shell just simply doesn’t fill with nutmeat. Or the tree may be the victim of Beech bark disease.
How to store and use beechnuts.
As long as beechnuts remain in the shell, they last a long time. Store them, unshelled, in a jar with a tight fitting lid. Because they are high in fat, after being shelled they must be stored in vacuum sealed bags in the freezer to keep them from getting rancid.
After the flexible shell is removed, the nuts have a thin brown paper-like coating with the white nutmeat inside. Some folks take the trouble to rub off the paper coating, but I don’t bother.
Beechnuts contain about 20% protein, 50% fat, and more than 30% carbohydrates. When raw they are slightly toxic, primarily from Saponic glycoside, which can cause stomach irritation when eaten in large quantities.
The toxins, however, are neutralized by heat. The nuts may be roasted in the oven at 350°F for 8 to 10 minutes, or pan roasted for 3 to 5 minutes, until they smell yummy.
Then you can use them to garnish a salad. Or, if you have lots, you can grind them into flour for baking. Or, like we do, simply bake them raw into delicious beechnut cookies.
Delicious Beechnut Cookies
| Cream | ½ cup butter ¼ cup sugar |
| Beat in | 1 egg yolk 1 teaspoon vanilla |
| Add | 1¼ cup flour |
| Stir in | ½ cup beechnuts |
| Chill. Roll into 24 balls. | |
Bake at 350°F for 20 minutes or until golden. | |
| While hot, coat with | powdered sugar |
(Here’s an explanation of My Recipe Format.)