How to Crack Pecans in Austin Texas

For those of you who are inclined toward urban foraging, or if you’re lucky enough to have a pecan tree on your property, you’ve noticed that 2024 is the best pecan harvest that Austin has seen since at least 2020. This is no doubt due to the relatively mild and wet spring and summer we had. But most wild pecan trees will vary the size of their nut yield year to year, and this is most definitely a mast year for them. So if you find yourself with many pounds of delicious Texas pecans on your hands, you’re probably wondering how to get that delicious (and expensive) food out of that pesky shell.

Well, you’ve got a few options. The classic technique, which can be applied anywhere, is to hold two pecans in the palm of your hand and then squeeze them together until one of the shells breaks. Most often you will use this method while you’re walking somewhere and you’ve scavenged a few pecans that have fallen on the sidewalk on your way.

You can also use a tool designed for cracking nuts. In that regard the classic tools, such as a doll that looks like a Russian Cossack with terrifying hinged teeth, or the plier-like crackers, will in no way suffice. They take way too long and they will pulverize your pecans into a zillion crumbs. The best home-use cracker is called an inertia cracker, which uses a rubberband-powered piston to blow the shell off the nutmeat with sheer kinetic energy.

However, in a year this generous with its pecans, it is well worth your time to get the nuts semi-professionally cracked. A pecan cracking service known only to the old Austin crowd, advertised only by word of mouth, and whispered about over Crestview fences and Hyde Park alleyways, are the cracking machines at the Lamar Senior Activity Center. You will not find this program listed on the website or on any of the social media.

In 2024 the details were something like, 10am to 2pm on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday, from November to sometime in January. But, man, do not quote me on that. You’re going to have to call them up to confirm the hours before going down there as if this were 1997. Or look at the sandwich board on 29th Street, which appears to be the only advertising.

Once you know they’ll be there, you’ll take your pecans down to the Senior Activity Center and follow the signs to the shack at the end of the lot. One of the senior volunteers will take your bags and weigh them. There’s a system involving a logbook, stapled stubs, and shelves for the cracking queue and other shelves for the cracked nuts. It may take a couple of hours or a couple of days to get your bag of nuts back, which is when you’ll give them the payment. It costs fifty cents per pound, which is a deal considering that it will take you about an hour to crack a pound of nuts by hand using an inertia cracker and days without one. They say that the cracking operation goes to support the various senior activities over the rest of the year.

It’s important to note that the machines crack but don’t shell the pecans. You’ll walk out of there with still more work to do, but it’ll go pretty fast and you’ll have a very high percentage of unshattered pecan halves. The machines themselves are very loud, so the guys running them wear ear protection as they feed bag after bag into the hoppers.

There are some rules. Your pecans need to be in disposable paper bags. I do not know why, but I don’t want to start a fight about it. And each bag has to weigh less than twenty pounds. Remember, they’re seniors! Do you want to be responsible for them lifting a 21-pound paper bag onto a shelf? No, you do not.

They will call you when the order is done instead of texting (remember, they’re seniors!), and don’t expect them to leave a voicemail. Happy shelling!