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nafex - [NAFEX] Dehydrator Recommendations, hickory syrup/butter

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  • From: Lucky Pittman <lucky.pittman@murraystate.edu>
  • To: North American Fruit Explorers <nafex@lists.ibiblio.org>, longdistshtr@shtc.net, redherring@tnaccess.com
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  • Subject: [NAFEX] Dehydrator Recommendations, hickory syrup/butter
  • Date: Tue, 09 Dec 2003 14:37:35 -0600

At 06:47 PM 12/5/2003 -0500, Doc Lisenby wrote:
Heck Lucky, I used Donna's trick.  I dried my 'simmons in the old SUV which I can't afford to drive because of the gas prices.  You haven't been up there so long that you don't have an old car in your back yard, have you? The folks in Alabama will disown you.
Yeah, I know.  My wife doesn't have those WT leanings like myself.  No extra cars around my place, though my truck looks like it oughta be up on blocks out back - the kids don't want me picking them up from school/practice, especially if I've got the bed full of bagged leaves I picked up while cruising the residential neighborhoods.  ;>)
My dad has cut back, though - I don't think there are but two 'extra' vehicles in the yard back home - and one of them actually runs! - but my old '61 Rambler station wagon IS out there in the barnyard somewhere, with a black cherry tree growing up between the bumper and the grille.

Hey, I tried my hand at making some 'hickory syrup' this weekend, after thinking about something Donna had told me about a local restaurant in the Cookeville area that's famous for its 'hickory bark butter'.
I'd been saving all my hickory nutshells after cracking and picking out the nutmeats; had about a gallon/gallon and a half of good clean shell pieces, with a few fragments of nutmeat still clinging in there in some.  Took a dozen or so freshly collected mockernut nuts, crunched 'em with my vise-grips and pitched them in the pot, along with the hulls from 3 or 4 of those nuts(still partially green).  Also pitched in a couple of small pieces of shagbark hickory bark - the restaurant Donna told me about makes theirs exclusively with hickory bark, but I didn't know what effect lichens and poison ivy rootlets might have on the flavor or reaction from consumers.
Covered the nuts/hulls/bark with a couple of gallons of water, brought it to a boil, and simmered it all day long, then scooped out the chunks and strained through clean cloths - twice. 
Ended up with about 6 cups of aromatic light brown liquid.  Stirred in 3 cups of sugar, and cooked it down to about 3-3.5 cups of thin syrup.
Looked at Donna's 'recipe' this morning, and I see that I probably should have used more sugar.  May have to add some more sugar and cook again to get it thick enough to work well when I whip it up into butter.  Donna indicated that the recipe from the restaurant calls for 5 lbs of butter to 1 pint of thick hickory bark syrup.
I'll report back on this when I get a chance to whip up some butter with it.  Probably ought to write it up for POMONA. and the NNGA Nutshell.

Lucky Pittman
USDA Zone 6
Hopkinsville, KY


  • [NAFEX] Dehydrator Recommendations, hickory syrup/butter, Lucky Pittman, 12/09/2003

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