Hickory Nut Milk (Kanuchi)

Hickory Nut Milk is a favorite of ours in the Fall. The resulting “milk” is surprisingly tasty. We like to drink it warm with just a little honey added!

Gather your Hickory nuts (hulls removed) and crack them into pieces with a hammer. Check for any rancid ones, (go by smell or a yellowish “off” color) or ones that have hollow or dark interiors. Pick out any shells that do not have nut meat in them and discard.
Pound the cracked nuts into a coarse paste. Traditionally, a hollowed-out log called a Kanone [pronounced kŭ-nō-nuh or kŭ-nō-nee] and a heavy stick was used. Nut paste is ready when the oil is released from the nuts and it is able to stick together. **If you’re going to make this into milk or soup right away and don’t want to save the finished product for later, you can pulverize them enough with the hammer and skip this and the next step. It still works just fine. Often I do it this way and use a colander to pre-sift most of the shells from the nut meat. Eyeball that you have enough nut meat to make a 2-3 inch ball, then proceed to step 1 below.
Form nut paste into a 2-3 inch diameter ball. Once the paste is made and formed into a ball, it will keep well in the freezer until you’re ready to use it. The nut paste ball was considered a valued gift in the Cherokee culture.

To make it into a drink or a soup:

In a pot, add the ball to 1 quart of water. Break it apart and simmer for 10 – 15 minutes, stirring frequently
Carefully pour off just the floating nuts and “milk”, leaving any shell pieces in the bottom of the pot. Discard the shell pieces and keep the milk and nut meat.
Return milk and nut meat to the pot and simmer until it begins to thicken and turn golden. Pour off again, leaving any small remaining shell pieces in the bottom of the pot. You can also skim off the floating nuts before pouring off the milk if you want to keep the nut meat to add back to your soup. The shells sink, so there’s no danger of them being in the nut meat.

Traditionally, this is spooned into a bowl of cooked rice or hominy with some sugar to make a type of soup. We like one cup of rice or hominy per two cups of the nut milk.