Matt turned 38 yesterday and asked for pecan pie instead of cake. Not just any pecan pie, he said, but one made with pecans from his own backyard, a point he made twice during dinner and once more while cutting himself a second slice. In fairness, he did rake.
The big pecan tree came with the house when we bought it in 2017, and it's the reason our backyard is shady enough to use in July. It also drops nuts from late October into November, some years a lot and some years hardly any. Pecan trees tend to alternate, and this is a good year. Since the third week of October we've picked up about twelve pounds in the shell, most of it the morning after a windy front came through. The tree is nearly done now. The stragglers belong to the squirrels.
Gathering and curing
Picking up pecans is the one yard job my kids volunteer for. After school Wyatt and Eli take the brown paper bags I save from H-E-B and work the yard in a grid, and Rosie follows behind, putting pecans in a bag and then taking them back out. Biscuit supervises by lying exactly where the most nuts are.
A few rules before anything goes in a bag. Toss any nut with a small round hole in the shell, a crack, or a shell that's gone dark and soft. If a pecan feels light for its size or rattles when you shake it, it's probably empty or shriveled, so it goes too.
Fresh pecans need to dry before cracking, or the nutmeats come out rubbery and a little bitter. I learned that our first fall in this house. Now they go in a single layer on old window screens set across two sawhorses in the garage for about two weeks, until a kernel snaps cleanly when I bend it. By November the garage is finally cool enough for that.
Cracking without losing our minds
In 2021 I bought a lever-style pecan cracker for $24, and it's one of the best things I've spent money on in this kitchen. It clamps to the edge of the table, you drop a nut in, pull the handle, and the shell splits without smashing what's inside. Wyatt runs the cracker and I pick out the meats on a towel at the kitchen table after the little ones are in bed. We get through about four pounds in the shell in an evening.
So far we've cracked the first five pounds, which gave us almost exactly two pounds of halves and pieces. That's about 40 percent, which seems normal for backyard pecans with thicker shells than the ones sold at the store. If the rest yields the same, we'll end up with close to five pounds shelled. Pecans have been about $9 a pound at the store this fall, so that's roughly $45 worth, for a few evenings of cracking and a lot of bending over.
Shelled pecans go into quart zip bags, flattened, into the freezer. At room temperature the oils turn rancid in a few weeks. Frozen, they keep until next fall.
Matt's birthday pie
- 1 unbaked 9-inch pie crust (mine is all-butter, but a refrigerated one works fine)
- 1 1/2 cups pecans, toasted
- 3 eggs
- 1 cup light corn syrup
- 3/4 cup packed brown sugar
- 4 tablespoons butter, melted
- 1 teaspoon vanilla and a pinch of salt
Toast the pecans at 350 for 8 minutes. Whisk the eggs, corn syrup, brown sugar, butter, vanilla and salt, stir in the pecans, pour it all into the crust and bake at 350 for 55 to 60 minutes, until the edges are set and the center barely jiggles. Let it cool at least two hours before cutting. With our own pecans, the pie comes to about $4.60.
I'd like to say it went perfectly. The first pan of pecans I toasted went in right before Rosie needed a bath, and eight minutes turned into fifteen. They were black. I lost about a cup and a half, which in shelled backyard pecans feels like losing money twice. For the second pan, I stood at the oven like I was back on the line.
Granola for the rest of the week
Pie is for birthdays. Granola is for every morning. I stir together 4 cups of old-fashioned oats, 1 1/2 cups chopped pecans, 1/2 cup honey, 1/3 cup oil, a teaspoon of cinnamon and half a teaspoon of salt, spread it on a half-sheet pan and bake it at 300 for 35 to 40 minutes, stirring once at the 20-minute mark. Then I leave it alone to cool on the pan so it sets in clusters. A batch costs about $2.40 and fills our big jar, which lasts Matt and Wyatt about a week over yogurt.
The rest of the pecans already have plans. A few cups are set aside for the pecan sandies that go on our December cookie plates, and Debbie has asked, twice, whether any are coming to Tyler at Christmas.
