How to Remove the Skin from Walnuts

Published on Thursday, February 7, 2008, by CHOW Video Team / Edit Post

How to Remove the Skin from Walnuts

Daniel Duane goes panning for golden walnut nuggets.

CHOW Tips are the shared wisdom of our community. If you’ve figured out some piece of food, drink, or cooking wisdom that you’d like to share on video (and you can be in San Francisco), email Meredith Arthur and tell us what you’ve got in mind.

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  • The simpler technique is to use a fry basket and omit the towel altogether. A fry basket is available in most cooking stores or restaurant supply houses. They're cheap, make excellent pasta baskets as well, work well as a strainer with a handle, and they also do a great job for fried food, as do the fry pots, which are also cheap and highly functional (made to work hand in glove with the...+READ

    The simpler technique is to use a fry basket and omit the towel altogether. A fry basket is available in most cooking stores or restaurant supply houses. They're cheap, make excellent pasta baskets as well, work well as a strainer with a handle, and they also do a great job for fried food, as do the fry pots, which are also cheap and highly functional (made to work hand in glove with the baskets).-COLLAPSE

  • The tannic acid in walnut skins reacts with something in salad dressings to make tender burning spots on my tongue. Maybe this technique will help. Thanks! Do I need to toast them as aggressively as those in your demo?

  • Well, you can, but it's not just the shells that people sometimes remove--walnut skins, the very thin papery membrane around the nuts themselves, carry that little bitterness that makes kids dislike walnuts. And the bitterness gets a little more pronounced if you toast the walnuts, even though toasting also adds a wonderful flavor of its own. So that's why a person might go through the trouble of...+READ

    Well, you can, but it's not just the shells that people sometimes remove--walnut skins, the very thin papery membrane around the nuts themselves, carry that little bitterness that makes kids dislike walnuts. And the bitterness gets a little more pronounced if you toast the walnuts, even though toasting also adds a wonderful flavor of its own. So that's why a person might go through the trouble of getting the skins off--especially for putting toasted walnuts in salads or other dishes. I hope that makes sense.

    And hey, thanks for the nice note. :)-COLLAPSE

  • Daniel, looked like a lot of work ... can't I simply use shelled walnuts to begin with? Still, your delivery in these videos is sweet