At last we have done it ! after several tries, Basil Pesto made from the nuts of a single cone picked off the tree two days ago, the cone I tried was just a little one, I opened the cone to retrieve the nuts, then opened the hard shells and there they were, just a few mins work to sort the nuts from the shells, all of the equipment we used was already here under our noses, really excited !
ralta,
Dec 31, 4:00pm
What equipment did you use? I personally find it hard work to figure out when to harvest & to open up the nuts without getting brown powdery muck all over the place.
annies3,
Dec 31, 5:16pm
Hi the powder is part of the process all the nuts are covered with the dark powder and it falls everywhere, pick the cones when they are brown unopened, heat them till they are open, then a good tap on the base of the cone will loosen the nuts still enclosed in their hard shells, I used a small hammer with the cone held on concrete. Then I ran the nuts through a grain crusher set at the correct width for the size of the nuts, as above just a case of sorting the nuts from the shells.
ralta,
Dec 31, 8:42pm
Thank you annie. I can see why pine nuts are so expensive now. It must be labour intensive harvesting & shelling all those nuts. Your pesto sounds yum too.
annies3,
Jun 23, 3:03pm
Yes I guess that's why they are so expensive, but now it is so simple compared to other methods we have tried, only takes a few mins, to extract the nuts from the cone if they are properly open and a few seconds through the crusher, it is possible to purchase the gear to do this for a few thousand dollars lol.
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