A while ago one of my friends went to Hawaii for vacation. She asked me what I wanted from Hawaii, and since I already have rocks for the labyrinth, I told her I would really love to have some macadamia nuts.
I love macadamia nuts, but so often when you buy them in the stores around here they are very old, have not been stored right, and are rancid. Considering the high price you have to pay for them, this is more than just a little disappointing, especially since they are packaged in such a way that you can’t tell they are bad until you get them home.
Well, she went off to Hawaii and when she returned she very proudly presented me with a bag of fresh macadamia nuts in the shell. Needless to say, I was not expecting nuts in the shell. I didn’t even know they sold them raw, all the macadamias I had ever encountered were shelled, and most of them roasted and salted to boot.
The bag had a label on it. It read “A very hard nut to crack. Delicious raw.” It went on to give roasting directions for roasting the nuts in the shell. I am here to testify that macadamia nuts are indeed a very hard nut to crack, and roasting them does not make them any easier to get out of their shell.
We tried our regular nut cracker, and quit trying to break open the shells before it broke, and also before we hurt our hands. I tried hitting them with a hammer, but they bounced off the cutting board and flew around the kitchen in the wildest manner. In fact, I left a very considerable dent in the cutting board. We did manage to break one open, but the incredible force necessary resulted in pieces of nut that were pretty much microscopic in size.
Obviously, we were missing something here. I had no idea how they got them out of their shells in the factories where they were processed, and I also was pretty sure that the natives who had discovered them knew how to extract them from their shells.
Of course, I immediately went to Google and searched for information on how to crack macadamia nuts. I found several amusing sites with no very useful information. I learned that in Hawaii, the natives have favorite “Nut cracking” rocks with holes just the right size to contain a nut while they whack it with another rock. We don’t have a lot of lava rocks with holes in them around here, so I sort of started to despair that I was ever going to eat these delicious morsels.
Then I happened across a site where they showed a picture of how to crack macadamia nuts, and it involved using vise grips and a hammer. The vice grips act as the “hole in the rock” and the hammer acts as the “Nut smashing rock.” I asked my dear husband if we had vise grips, and he wanted to know what I wanted them for. So I explained my plan, and he went out to his work shop and brought me a macadamia nut cracking station.
You hold the nut with the vise grips, place it on the iron bar and smack it not too gently three or four times with the flat hammer. It will crack open and you will be able to extract the nut meat almost completely whole from the shell.
As you can see from the bag, I have been successfully cracking this hard nut to crack for some time. I’m almost out of nuts.
Someone needs to go to Hawaii pretty soon!
That is an insane amount of work and tools to get a nut open! I hope they were good.
They are good. Once we had the tools in place, it really isn’t that hard to crack the nuts, and the meat comes out almost entirely whole. Have you ever tried to do hickory nuts or black walnuts? After working insanely hard to get those babies cracked, you have to spend a lot of time picking the nutmeats out of the cracks and crannies of the nuts. As far as I’m concerned, black walnuts are something I BUY!.
Wow! I had no idea that macadamia nuts were so tough to liberate from their shells. I like the way you came up with the perfect tools. I bet they were delicious!
Actually, Jim was the one who came up with the perfect tools. All I wanted was the vise grips, and he was the one who had the brilliant idea of the iron bar and the wonderful flat headed hammer.
I love Macadamia nuts too – and they are grown here in Australia so I can get them (ready shelled, thankfully) pretty easily and still lovely and fresh. They also honey roast them here… and they are delicious!
My brother and I devised a great way to crack open walnuts when we were kids as we were always given them in our Christmas stockings… we would put one in the door frame and then slam the door on ’em! It worked a treat, especially at 4am on Christmas morning!!
I’m sure those were not black walnuts, but english walnuts which are quite different. If you slammed the door on a black walnut you would have probably shattered the door frame and removed the door from its hinges.
A girl at work brought macadamia nuts in from her tree here in San Diego. We looked on the internet and came up with another way. You boil the nuts for about 45 minutes. Place them on the cookie sheet and let them sit overnight. The next morning I put the shells in the oven and baked them for about 1hr. The shells crack open a little bit from the boiling and then after the baking of the nut it cracks open a little more. I let them cool off a little, took them out to my patio,grabbed a hammer and held on to the nut and hit them on the seam 3-4 times with the hammer. They opened pretty easy. Then I put them in the oven at 275 degrees for about 15 min. you have to watch them because they will brown in areas. They don’t come out hard they end up being soft. THey taste sweet and they are good. Lot of work,wouldn’t want a tree that’s for sure.
This method sounds as complicated as some of the German cookies I make for Christmas! I imagine you could eat them as soon as they are out of the shells, but roasted macadamia nuts are hard to beat. Gotta be my favorite nut. Next time I have some in the shell, I’ll try this way.
thank you some for the idea,its a hard nut to get indeed!wish there was an easy way,i tried boiling ,the oil in between the shell stored in a shored in a honey comb like thing was so hash!p’se thinkof another easy way thanks
I’m a recent expat to Mexico and was excited when I found out macadamia trees are native in some parts of the country. You can buy them fresh and really inexpensively; the only catch is they are still in the shell…you story perfectly describes my flying macadamia experience and i’ve resorted to the pliers and hammer approach as well but am still searching for an easier way; i can’t imagine factories of people sitting around smashing these nuts with hammers but it explain why they are so expensive in the grocery store!
What I imagine commercially is a specially designed conveyer belt that holds the nuts in deep round indentations as it carries them through a roller assembly that cracks the hard outer shell and leaves the nut intact. With not a lot of demand for the special design, the apparatus is no doubt rather expensive.
happily hippily danced through your blog. Funny. I have many trees behind my house that keep producing to pick. Hawaiian gathering rights and all….good except for the hard shell. Let me know when you need a refill!
Jesse Lea;
Hopefully you will get this message… I also have a tree in Orange County, CA and was frustrated with the process…. I discovered a wonderful machine called “Universal Nutcracker” located up in Oregon… you can find Corey on the internet. Wonderful guy.. I purchased a KitchenAid attatchment but the shell is so hard that it was pretty hard on my wifes KitchenAid and since I enjoy her cooking and baking so much I fabricated my own heavy duty motor stand… Anyways, Corey sells a “tabletop” industrial cracker which would probably be sufficient for your multiple trees…. runs about $1300.00…. and of course the full blown heavy duty industrial for $3500.00…. my model was $400.00.. but again it was only the cracker blade attatchment. The bigger models come with motor and stand. Anyways… youll see all that on his site and he is great to answer your questions… Hope this was helpful.
Scot
Scotyp1968@gmail.com
I loved your story. The reason I am even looking for way to crack macadamia nuts is pretty funny. I have a favorite squirrel that comes round sometimes after church on Sunday. Well, like any other Sunday, he peeked out and I began making the squeaking noises with my lips that I know attract his attention. I was really just showing my friend the squirrel was responsive to the sound but I had no goodies to give him. Well, as divine providence would have it, my friend pulled a bag of macadamia nuts in the shell from her purse (she happened to have them because her son in law was going to discard them because he couldn’t figure out how to open them). Back to the story…she handed me a couple of the nuts and I rolled one to the squirrel. He promptly picked it up and scurried off into the bushes with his new found booty. Little did I know at the time that the nut was hard to crack and the poor squirrel would probably never get to experience the “tasty morsel”. As we stood talking I discovered from my friend that the macadamia is a hard nut to crack. It just so happened, at that very moment, I was on my way to another friend’s home who is from Hawaii. I assured my friend with the nuts we would have an answer on to how to crack these nuts in 5 minutes. I took my nut and set out to find the answer. Ha! My friend from HI wasn’t home at the time, so I showed my nut and asked a relative of hers how to get at the meat in these nuts. She had no idea how to open it because she’s been on the mainland all her life and never experienced growing up on the islands. It was quite funny, so I took my one nut and proceeded to search for the answer. Which lead me to you today. Thanks for the information. I am promptly going to pass on the tidbits I learned here. I hope my friend didn’t give up hope. As for my squirrel, I guess he’ll think I betrayed him. 🙂 May all our nuts be easy to crack in the coming year! Merry Christmas!
Wow, you guys seriously haven’t found the solution to the Macadamia nut? You need a nut cracker; just not the usual type of nut cracker.
The ones on the site listed above work quite easily but can damage the nut slightly some times. However there are many of these style of devices on the net if you have a look around. I think you could get them on Ebay too, at least you can from Australia.
Good luck, and happy (more simplified) macadamia nut cracking 🙂
Actually, the hammer, anvil and vise grips are all things I have on hand and they work perfectly for cracking macadamias. Why should I buy something to replace what works?
I live in Brisbane, Queensland. Ever since I was little (about 50 plus years ago), we have always just put the macadamias in a bench vise (eye or pointy end to the plates of the vise). Hold it with your fingers (if your fingers are smaller than the nut, of course) and wind the handle. Voila!! Kids can do it no problem.
Now that sounds easy and nice and quiet. We have a bench vise out in Jim’s workshop. I’d have the extra added benefit of getting some exercise along with my nuts.
[…] macadamia nut shells open without smashing the nutmeat into smithereens. Vise grips. Roasting. Hammers. Putting them in the freezer. Wedging them into sidewalk cracks and pounding them open. (There was […]
Well, after checking out a few sites, I figured it should be fairly easy just to use vice-grips alone. They’re not cheap to buy either but most people have a pair in their tool-box – don’t they? ANyway I do and I tried them out with success!!
Just adjust the jaws depending on the size of the nut and squeeze – if they it doesn’t crack, just re-adjust the jaws.
That easy 🙂
Happy cracking.
YOu must have a better grip than I do! I need the extra oomph the hammer gives me, but the vice grips do work.
Thanks for the instructions re boiling, etc. I’m going to try that method today.
Macadamia trees flourish in our area (near Pasadena, CA) and I can tell you, the squirrels have no problem opening them. They seem to gnaw at the nut with their teeth. We have a “mulch” of shells beneath the tree. Some of them have one small, round hole in them – the squirrels must scoop the nut out with their hands. Other shells are broken in half or into pieces.
Someone from Fallbrook, CA (near San Diego), where they grow a lot of macadamias, said the perfect tool is an old brake drum – I think – some part of car brakes, anyway…. this part has several holes in it that you can fit several nuts in and bam each one with a hammer to break several at a time.
I did buy a nut cracker on line (maybe $20 or so?) but it didn’t work very well, though I only used it a few times. Maybe if I had practiced more, I would have become more efficient.
Cathy, go online and find a lever actuated vise style cracker from Hawaii… I got mine for $80.00…. works absolutely wonderful. As far as squirrels are concerned, they were eating my nuts also but if you examine them closer you’ll find they are eating the green nuts where the shell is still soft. The three squirrels that were decimating my harvest have gone to squirrel heaven courtesy of a Red Rider from Daisy… lol….
So what were the directions for roasting them in the shell?
I did this years ago and then cracked them in a workbench vise.
I bought some in the shell but there are no directions.
I prefer to roast and then shell.
I am thinking 250 oF for an hour.
We had a macadamia tree and squirrels. The squirrels have no problem getting into the nuts. It’s amazing that it is so hard for us and so easy for the squirrels!
Same deal with black walnuts here. Try cracking one of those sometime! The squirrels seem to have no problem at all. Go figure.
Well, this information is invaluable but too late for me this year. I bought some ‘in shell’ macedamia nuts on a recent trip to the big island of Hawaii. I didn’t know that hey were so difficult to crack open. After an hilarious hour trying to crack them without mashing the nuts I (we – there were four of us) gave up.No wonder they were so inexpensive. But I will try again next time I am in Hawai’i.
I have a macadamia nut tree in my back garden and boy they are hard to get in to. my kids use the gate to slam them in and only sometimes we can find the nut. i roasted them and it made them taste like an old English chestnut they too are yummy but i wanted macadamia nut taste. I will search out a set of tools today and try to come up with a method.
I have a tree and cracking the nuts is hard. But putting them in a vice and turning the handle until they crack gets the nuts out usualy in one piece. Then wash them and roast them. Macadamia nuts! Taste great!
Don
Yep, they’re tough little suckers aren’t they! The best solution I’ve seen so far are modified vice grips. A guy was selling them at my local market a few years ago, all he did was grind down one of the grips so it was thin, like a cutting blade. He left the other ‘jaw’ intact. This means that one jaw grips the nut while the other cuts it, and is very effective. It’s still a bit of work, and it’s still not that fast, but it’s easier and faster than any of the vise style, purpose-built macadamia crackers that I’ve seen and tried. Much cheaper too.
our new home, on the south coast of nsw, australia has a magnificent macadamia tree, and after much hilarity and nuts flying in all directions from the front verandah, i have decided to pile them all under the wheels of our vehicle, and the next time we drive out, hopefully, the nuts will be cracked for us!
I just returned from Hawaii with the nuts. thanks for your help. we used the vice grips and it worked fine.
just to let you know that macadamia nuts originated from queensland austraila so they are best grown in wamer areas i live in sydney and have a tree which produces kilos of of the bastards i have to throw them out there r so many
I don’t have time for the vice grip. I use a cheap rubber doormat that has half-round indentations to stop the nuts from flying away. The mat goes on an outside concrete floor, then nuts are placed in the holes, then the hammer flies. You learn how hard to hit, some of the nuts will jump out and fall into another hole so you can chase them and hit them again and the chore becomes a matter of skill and almost entertaining. Young visitors seem to like doing it which is fine with me….
The chore would be easier if the nut meat was free inside the shell but many of them stick to the shell: how do I pre-treat the nuts to get the meat off the shell?
That sounds like a very excellent method! I don’t know about the pre-treating, I have never had trouble with them sticking to the shell. Maybe roasting would do it?
I’m glad to hear that a doormat works for you. I use a large stone with an indentation and strike the nut with a heavy hammer. For the nuts to be loose in the shell let them age a month or two.
haha, hilarious post! I live in Hawai’i and have often used a much simpler method–you just put the nut in a large eyebolt lying on top of a rock and crack it with a hammer; the eyebolt holds it in place perfectly. But it’s well worth buying one of those nice lever cracker that cost about $100.
What a perfect idea! Sounds much easier than the vise grips…
I got my lever cracker from a Hawaiian supplier for $80…….wayyyyyy easier and safer than macadamia nut projectiles… lol
Thanks for this post! Just got back from hawaii with a bag of nuts gathered from my nephew’s mac nut tree. I was wondering what the HECK we were going to do with the things.
Roast in shell and crack with vise and hammer! Thanks (PS roasting them makes them taste better)
The Mac nuts have to be dried, in order to shrink the nut inside the shell, before the commercial cracking process – or the nuts end up mostly in pieces, instead of wholes. The natives here use the two stone system but to my mind you have to buy or make a special levered cracker or use the slow vice method – the hammer makes you walk too much to find the bits!! The nuts are great but need a dedicated opening system. Or buy them opened. One opened the roasting is simply a night in the oven at minimum temperature, not a quick hot process.
A handyman can make a good nutcracker from a small block of hardwood about 80 mm cube. Simply drill a hole into the end grain large enough to hold the nut loosely and deep enough to leave about a quarter of the nut exposed. Hit it with a hammer. most times your kernel will be in one piece. Mine has a smaller hole for smaller nuts on the opposite end. If you can’t get suitable hardwood, you could make it from steel or aluminium,or put the head of a large bolt in the bottom of the (deeper) hole.
Hi, I have a tree, just one. The thing that works for me is pretty simple-just a hammer, a pair of pliers to hold the nut, and a pick to get at the pieces if they stick in the shell. ..
Nice article! I happened across it as I was trying to find stats on how much force it took and stuff as I might be designing a product for market to do just this job in CAD for a client in Australia. Loved it. I was especially amused at the idea of them flying around the kitchen like very large bullets!
Mike
EMH Studios
A simple press made from a 1/2″ nut welded into 3 1/2″ square RHS box steel. A hole is drilled through the steel before the nut is welded into place. Then use a 1/2″ bolt to thread through the welded in place nut. Place the macadamia underneath the bolt & screw down. Works a treat. Good luck. PS – A piece of bar steel welded across the top of the bolt saves having to use a spanner to screw down. Make sure the bolt is long enough and with thread full length of the shaft, to reach the bottom.
How about putting it on a toaster then drop to a cold water?
That should crack the shell
i have bought a macadamia ( Queensland nut ) hammer which has rubber on the end to hold the nut…i’m disabled but can get enuff thump to break the nuts, years ago when we used to pick them up whilst out horseriding i put them in an old cloth bag and pounded with the hammer till they were all broken… then picked out the meat bits and binned the bag when it got too ragged lol. This rubber hammer doesn’t mash them so badly!
I have had similar frustrating experiences. With a bit of Kiwi (New Zealand) problem solving skill the following worked very well. Hold the nut with top and bottom against the jaws of an engineer’s vice (most people have one). Tighten the vice until you hear a loud cracking sound. Tighten little further for another cracking sound then remove the whole nut. Generally the inside comes out in one piece. It does take a little practice and it works about 90% of the time. The other easier way is to buy the nuts already shelled!!
Wow… pretty amazing to see people still leaving comments year after year…
I own one tree in Orange County, CA and have progressed from the brick on the sidewalk to channel locks to the bench vise and now to my motorized version,….. which you can see at scotyp1968 on YouTube…
For the onesy twosy crackers out there,,, the vise is your best bet.
For the dozens upon dozens the Hawaiian vise style cracker for about $80 is the best bet which you can find on Ebay or suppliers from Hawaii. We started out with that. Usually the meat will come out mostly whole but again this is tedious for the 1-2 cups needed for a batch of cookies….
For the hundreds I found Corey’s “Universal Nutcracker” KitchenAid attatchment which was fine for a few hundred but it was hard on my wife’s machine so I fabricated a motorized stand…
For the thousands,,, those of you who own multiple trees, Corey sells two sizes of crackers depending on your needs… These machines are super rugged heavy duty and handle the macadamia nut with no problem whatsoever. Email Corey at info@universalnutcracker.com or check out his website.
Love the funny stories guys… however… be careful with those nuts zinging around or the pieces…
Scot Palmer scotyp1968@gmail.com for any questions…
Yes, it is pretty amazing to see people still commenting… this is probably one of my more popular posts. That and How to Keep Birds Out of Your Grapes…
I have a macadamia tree in San Diego and we use a PVC pipe cutter. Works fine, little mess. Only thing you might complain about is it cuts the nut in half. If you are not familiar with them, they are a bladed hand held device that is easy to use. My wife sits infront of the TV while she cracks and eats the nuts.
My daughter lives in LaMesa, CA, and has a macadamia tree. The squirels have no problem getting them. We wait until the nuts are dried and shake before we crack them. We bought a special nut cracker for about $90.00 and it works really well. The problem we are having now is that a lot of them come out soft instead of hard. Am trying to figure out why. Mary
Gold Crown Macadamia Society in Escondido Ca. has table top Macadamia crackers that have a box around the cracker to hold loose nuts, and to keep the nut meat in a restricted area. They work quite well for the home cracker with just a tree or so. To allow the meat to release from the shell, you need to air dry them for several weeks after you have removed the husk; then roast them in the oven or in a food dehydrator for forty eight hours or so, crack a few and see if they release from the shell easily and have a crunchy nutty taste rather than a soft coconuty taste that they have when they come right out of the shell. If they are not crunchy, dehydrate them for several more days. There are small hand held crackers that come from Australia for around $12-18.00 that have a wing nut at the top that is connected to a threaded bolt with about an eighth inch diameter pin at the end that pushes into the shell, and helps it to start to crack. The unit is called a Qualla Crack or something like that. The nut is put into the hole in the center of the cracker, and the ears are rotated untill the nut makes a crack sound, and then backed off. Sometimes you have to rotate it twice to get it cracked sufficiently but it is a lot better than nuts flying all around by hitting them with a hammer on the concrete, and less expensive than the hundred dollar unit. Gold Crown also has a lot of other good information on their web site relating to different methods of toasting the nut meat, storage of cracked nuts, etc. I have a six inch Wilton Machinist’s Vise on my work bench which has a set of aluminum jaw inserts. On one of the inserts about 3/4 of an inch from the left end I counter sunk a hole thru the insert. The pointy end of the nut is placed in the hole and the vise is tightened, and it cracks them wonderfully! When I want to do a lot of nuts, I use an arbor press that is on a stand and it is quicker than the vise. We have eight children, and twenty grand kids, and when they come to visit Grandpa they like to have macadamia nuts, and fruit off the trees. They all line up and I start cracking… one for you, one for you, one for you, one for me… We have spent a lot of good bonding time chatting as we eat nuts and fruit. We have five Mac trees of four different cultivars, eleven Guava bush and trees of five varieties, six Avocado trees of different varieties, Figs, Loquats, Apples, Apricots, Plums, Grapes, of eight varieties, and a bunch of stuff that most people have not heard of unless the grew up in South America or Brazil…White Sapote, Black Sapote, Cherimoyas, Gogi berries, Acerola, Jaboticabas, Surinam Cherries etc. We also have some more common things like Blueberries and Boysenberries. I am on a trial of Japanese Haskap berry plants to see if we can get them to grow in Southern Calif. They are one of the highest antioxident plants and they taste good. Some people say they taste like a cross between a Raspberry and a Blueberry. I just received six plants, so we are going to give them a go, and see how they do. As you can probably tell, I like my fruit and nuts! Dave Sohn, California Rare Fruit Growers Assoc. member, Spring Valley Ca.d
Wow! What a lot of information. Thanks, David. I need to look into some of those fruits and see if they are hardy in my zone.
Try an Australian invention – the crack-a-mac. It’s available on Amazon. I’m in no way affiliated, I just have 3 trees and use this to easily open them.