We think that on the cold storage proposition, and if you have followed food processing and cold storage possibilities on strawberry shortcake, strawberry pies, apple pies and other types of cold storage products, I think when you go to the locker and pick out a little bag of lima beans in a cold storage locker or any other kind of cold packed foods, if you see a pack that looks attractive, chestnuts, after you get accustomed to their flavor especially, it will be a difficult thing for you to fail to pick up a bag of chestnuts and walk out with them among your other grocery purchases. That type of marketing has possibilities throughout the year.
With that possibility from last year this crop came in. We had an excellent crop. I contacted Mr. Harris, who is one of the professors working with food processing at Auburn, and we went over the work quite carefully together, what I had done and the possibilities for the work in the future, and with some suggestions from him and with his help we think we have just about fixed a product that will be a permanent thing on the grocery shelves throughout the year.
Up to the present time all of the nuts that were canned in cans with the shells on developed throughout the year somewhat of a soured condition. When you opened the can and smelled, the odor was foul. When you cracked the shell and tasted the nut, the flesh had just the least bit of a foul odor. Mr. Harris suggested that probably that was a flat sour. We weren't sure that it was flat sour, but we haven't had the bacteria check to find out whether it was caused by one of the thermophilic bacteria or not, but we are pretty confident that it was a flat sour that caused the foul odor. With careful heating and careful drying we have developed some products here that I think have a possibility, and these products will maintain their quality throughout the year.
+Nuts Cured Before Canning+
I have canned chestnuts that have been canned for three years, and the quality is just as good as it was a month after they were canned. The product, however, when it is canned green does not have the quality that it does when it is canned after curing. The way we handle these, to begin with, is to take the nuts from the field, put them on a woven wire and elevate the wire so that air can go under and over, cure at room temperature for about three days. If you cure longer than three days you will lose quite a few of your nuts. That is a rapid cure. We have not tried curing under cooler conditions to see if we can eliminate part of the damage that is caused by deterioration, but curing the nuts rapidly you get a deterioration on quite a few of the nuts after the third or fourth day. If you take the raw nuts three days cured rapidly where the air can circulate over and under, the quality is excellent raw, and I have those nuts cured for three days in cellophane bags on cold storage that can be sold throughout the year. Those nuts must be heated enough to stop the deterioration, whatever it is. It may be a physiological condition, I am not sure, it may be a vitamin reaction, I am not sure, but when the nut dries too fast it turns white on the inside, gets hard, loses its flavor, and it is no good.
This nut (indicating) canned in cans, I will give you the treatment for it. I told you we cured them on those drying racks for three days. Then we put them in a pressure cooker and run the temperature up to about 10 pounds pressure for 30 minutes, take them out of the pressure cooker and hull them, and at that stage they hull quite easily. The hull itself will turn loose from the nut quite easily if you heat it a little while before you try to hull. A machine which can thresh the hulls off very easily will be simple to develop. After the shell is taken off, then they are put in an oven (a drying oven that has an automatic control at 270 degrees), for about 10 minutes in order to evaporate the excess moisture that you get in the steaming process. Then they are put in the cans hot, set back into the oven and heated for just a few moments to get your temperature up again and you put lids on at a boiling temperature. You get quite a vacuum created by sealing them hot. We have had as high as fourteen and a half pounds of vacuum on those cans the third day after they were canned, and if you can get a vacuum like that by sealing the nuts hot, you can preserve their quality for a long period.
I don't care if you open any bag that's here and taste these products. You will find that the ones with the shells off are much better than the ones with the shells on. I believe you will find that. However, the quality of the nut with the shell on is excellent.
[Illustration: Mr. Hardy and some chestnuts prepared for storage
(Courtesy Southern Agriculturist)]
Chestnut Growing in the Southeast
Max B. Hardy,[2] Leeland Farms, Leesburg, Ga.